Four Words for Friend

“Beautifully written ... Makes a powerful case for knowing more than one language as a life-enriching skill that may enlarge our sympathies in a world that wants to build walls.”—Steven Poole, Guardian

“Fascinating... [Kohn] doesn’t hold out much hope of the Anglosphere learning to value other languages. Readers of this book will have no doubt how badly we will lose out as a result.”—Daniel Hahn, Spectator

“[In Kohn's final chapters] we can feel most viscerally the power of language and the pain of its loss, and at the same time arrive at an understanding of the fury and resentment fell by peoples all over the world when they believe that their languages and cultures are being eroded or taken away.”—Maureen Freely, Literary Review

“The latest book by science writer Marek Kohn is truly one for our times” —Anil Ananthaswamy, New Scientist

“One of the great pluses of this book is that it exists outside the Anglophone bubble. Many familiar applied linguists receive no mention. Instead, less familiar authorities and sources are drawn upon. Kohn is good at asking and answering the questions how? And why? How does multilingualism work and why does it matter?”—Christina Healey, British Association for Applied Linguistics Newsletter

“A breathtaking achievement. Marek Kohn is a real writer, a natural story-teller with a remarkable ability to present linguistic situations in a pictorial way.”— David Crystal, author of How Language Works and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language

"This is an engaging book about what it means to have more than one language at your disposal: how it feels, what it enables, and the complications it can cause. Kohn writes crisply, combining technical savvy with keen social insight and self-knowledge. The result is a generous vision of linguistic plurality - and of a world in which unity is possible not in spite of diversity, but because of it."— Henry Hitchings, author of The World in Thirty-Eight Chapters or Dr Johnson's Guide to Life