Quite entertaining and contains useful nuggets of info. ( )

Recommended by Samantha E

Read about menus, fish and chips (from sikbaj), ketchup (ke-tchup), toast, turkey, and desserts. Mildly interesting but not fascinating.

Quotes

I'd like to think that the lesson here is that we are all immigrants, that no culture is an island, that beauty is created at the confusing and painful boundaries between cultures and peoples and religions. (48)

"holidays often preserve what the everyday loses" (Sidney W. Mintz, 177) ( )

This book is about three of my favourite topics: history, food and language. Dan Jurafsky is a linguist whose research looks at what the migration and evolution of words can reveal about history, politics, psychology amongst other things. I think he has achieved a good balance between readability / accessibility and depth of research - it's actually a very 'academic' book, supported by detailed references and citations, but still very readable, partly because he uses many examples from his own experiences living in San Francisco. My only criticism is that the book is packed with annotations (equivalent to footnotes or references) that are not actually marked on the main text. I can understand that too many annotation symbols would be distracting, but discovering them at the end of the book doesn't seem very helpful (short of beginning the book all over again). Including them as footnotes at the bottom of each page would make a richer reading experience. This book has also taught me about the scope of modern-day linguistics research, enough to encourage me to perhaps try and look up his academic papers. I like how he has placed linguistics at the intersection of psychology, sociology, anthropology and history. ( )

This book is about three of my favourite topics: history, food and language. Dan Jurafsky is a linguist whose research looks at what the migration and evolution of words can reveal about history, politics, psychology amongst other things. I think he has achieved a good balance between readability / accessibility and depth of research - it's actually a very 'academic' book, supported by detailed references and citations, but still very readable, partly because he uses many examples from his own experiences living in San Francisco. My only criticism is that the book is packed with annotations (equivalent to footnotes or references) that are not actually marked on the main text. I can understand that too many annotation symbols would be distracting, but discovering them at the end of the book doesn't seem very helpful (short of beginning the book all over again). Including them as footnotes at the bottom of each page would make a richer reading experience. This book has also taught me about the scope of modern-day linguistics research, enough to encourage me to perhaps try and look up his academic papers. I like how he has placed linguistics at the intersection of psychology, sociology, anthropology and history. ( )

This book is about three of my favourite topics: history, food and language. Dan Jurafsky is a linguist whose research looks at what the migration and evolution of words can reveal about history, politics, psychology amongst other things. I think he has achieved a good balance between readability / accessibility and depth of research - it's actually a very 'academic' book, supported by detailed references and citations, but still very readable, partly because he uses many examples from his own experiences living in San Francisco. My only criticism is that the book is packed with annotations (equivalent to footnotes or references) that are not actually marked on the main text. I can understand that too many annotation symbols would be distracting, but discovering them at the end of the book doesn't seem very helpful (short of beginning the book all over again). Including them as footnotes at the bottom of each page would make a richer reading experience. This book has also taught me about the scope of modern-day linguistics research, enough to encourage me to perhaps try and look up his academic papers. I like how he has placed linguistics at the intersection of psychology, sociology, anthropology and history. ( )