Biting the Wax Tadpole

Oct 2, 2024 10:27 AM

Author:Elizabeth Little

What can Johnny Cash’s lyrics teach us about the little-known Tangut dialect? Is ‘tabernacle’ really a swear word in Quebecois? Which language has absolutely no verbs? What is Earth’s politest insult? And what is biting the wax tadpole actually a translation of?*

Prepare for a hilarious rollercoaster ride through hundreds of well-known, obscure, difficult, dead and even made-up languages. Elizabeth Little has waded through innumerable verb tables in every available mood and tense, untangled up to eighteen cases of noun, and wrestled with all kinds of complicated adjective, participles and glottal stops to bring you the best and most bizarre quirks of the ways people communicate all around the globe.

From the language that has no different word for ‘blue’ or ‘green’, to why Icelanders need official permission to name their children, from what makes a Korean TV hit to what people might think you’re saying if you order eggs in Spain, Biting the Wax Tadpole will ensure you’re never lost for words again.

*Coca-Cola, would you believe it?

Reviews

The Scots tongue, like most of the world's minority languages, is under pressure and Billy Kay in this excellent and cogent survey draws together the strands of our concern

—— Daily Express

Kay is the best writer on his own language I have read since Burchfield on English; his book should be put in schools, for it is capably seditious

—— The Herald

Moving, delightful, even inspiring

—— Edinburgh Review

It is not the kind of dry academic tome so cherished by linguistic nitpickers, but a bright, radical examination of the language which is at the heart of our existence

—— Aberdeen Press and Journal

A fresh and invigorating overview of a fascinating subject

—— Stirling Observer

Well written . . . provocative

—— The New York Times

Attuned to pop culture as well as to scholarship, Abley proves a deft social anthropologist

—— The Daily Telegraph

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