The book is called Foreign Languages: What
they don't often tell you. It aims to give children an awareness of
foreign languages.
It mentions lots of different languages: Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Russian, etc. On the left-hand pages there is text, and on the right-hand pages there are quiz questions with multiple choice answers. The book is divided into 15 short parts:
- Languages of the world
- Similarities between languages
- How languages differ: by their grammar
- How languages differ: by their alphabet
- Chinese writing
- Japanese writing
- Writing numbers in different languages
- Different ways of writing English: Braille, Morse, shorthand
- Phonetic and simplified English spelling
- Languages in Australia
- Why is translating so hard?
- The need for a common language
- Why can't everyone learn English?
- What is Esperanto?
- Why is Esperanto easier to learn?
Answer quiz questions
Approximately how many different languages are there in the world?
- 20
- 200
- 2000
- 5000
In which language are the following words written?
Пожалуйста, где здесь касса
- Greek
- Russian
- Hebrew
Who created Esperanto?
- Kevin Rudd
- Michael Jackson
- Ludwig Zamenhof
- Albert Einstein
The third edition of this
book, published in January 2009, can be bought for AU$8.00 + $2.00 postage to
anywhere in Australia from the author.
It can also be bought online
through UEA (based in the Netherlands).
The first two editions were called Mummy, why can't we all speak the same
language?.