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Mother Tongues: Travels Through Tribal Europe
 
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Mother Tongues: Travels Through Tribal Europe (Hardcover)

by Helena Drysdale (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 414 pages
  • Publisher: Picador (26 Oct 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0330372807
  • ISBN-13: 978-0330372800
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,222,778 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
  • See Complete Table of Contents

Product Description

Review
In 1996, Helena Drysdale, her husband and their two small children, Tallulah and Xanthe, got into their mobile home (a converted van) and began a journey around Europe that lasted nearly 18 months. In that time they visited most of the areas of western Europe where minority languages are still spoken, such as Brittany, Catalonia and Sardinia. Drysdale was interested in examining the cultures in which the languages were rooted and exploring the histories behind the rise and decline of the languages. It's a rich subject. Drysdale doesn't just rely on the information she picks up in each place: she has done plenty of book-based research and is extremely well-versed on the geography, history, culture and politics of many parts of Europe that are usually neglected. The book covers the more obscure minority languages such as Proven?al and Sami as well as the better-known ones like Basque and Breton. Drysdale talks to both native speakers and local experts about the state of the languages, and a familiar pattern emerges: a history of conquest and repression, in which the minority language is forbidden in schools; a nineteenth century revival led by the middle classes; and a 20th-century decline, precipitated in part by the First World War. Sometimes, as in the Basque country, the language becomes the focus of a liberation struggle. The book's impressive scholarship sits uneasily, however, beside the accounts of family life, and some readers may feel irritated at Drysdale's insistence on taking her precocious four-year-old and noisy one-year-old along to her interviews. Many of her interviewees clearly to Drysdale's surprise are understandably annoyed by the intrusion. The story of the delights and miseries of travelling around Europe in a van with one's family may have its audience, but it belongs in a different book. (Kirkus UK)

Literary Review
It is a great subject, and she does it more than justice in this unpretentious, well-written, sad and funny book. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Customer Reviews

8 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars An intruiging and illuminating travel book, 1 Jan 2003
By A Customer
The author travels with her husband and 2 young children through Europe in search of "tribal Europe" - Europe's (mostly)stateless "tribes" such as the Catalans, Bretons, Macedonians & others, including some you probably haven't heard of. She investigates their history , politics, language and lifestyles and paints a lively picture of Europe's nooks & crannies. Though rather low on humour, and containing rather more trivia about her children than I wanted to know, it's a compelling and illuminating read.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars The trials of Tallulah and Xanthe, 21 Feb 2003
By A Customer
The idea of the book tempted me to buy it, though I wish I'd been warned off by the reviewer who commented that it would have been improved by less information about the author's kids. It is less a book about the minority languages of Europe and more a family diary of an overlong holiday. I was torn between feeling sorry for Tallulah (being dragged away from her friends to live in a converted lorry) and wishing the child would behave well enough so that there could be more information on the topic the book is supposed to be about.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Book That Mirrors And Reveals The Realities of Europe, 20 Jan 2002
As a Gaelic speaker from the Outer Hebrides, reading Helena Drysdale's 'Mother Tongues' was like stepping into an amazing Hall of Mirrors - in which my own experience was reflected back in a thousand bewildering and distorted ways.

In its pages, the author records how she and her family undertook an eighteen month odyssey around Europe, visiting a number of the linguistic minorities that exist both at the centre and fringes of our continent. Heading to its southern edge, they met such people as the Basques and Catalans of the Iberian peninsula, the Sardinians and Corsicans from their respective islands in the Mediterranean. In Europe's opposite extreme, they encountered other islanders - such as the Alanders whose home lies in the Baltic Sea - and also the Sami, a group whose wanderings once crossed many national boundaries but are now mainly resident in Finland. En route, she also made the acquaintances of other cultures - from the Flemings and Walloons who live nose-to-nose (and sometimes almost fist-to-face) in modern Belgium to other lesser known peoples, such as the Friesians or the Ladin, a group from Northern Italy I, for one, had never heard about before.

Yet for all the differences between these groupings, it was the similarities between them that interested this reader most. History provided one mirror. Throughout their existence, most of the nation-states to which these peoples belonged refused to recognise any identity except the predominant, central culture of their country. With a few relevant deletions and substitutions, the words of a French Minister of Education in 1925 could easily have been repeated on the lips of any Spanish, Italian, even British government minister of that time;

'The only one who is truly French in heart and soul, and from head to toe, is he who knows and can speak and read the French language'.

They were similar, too, in the way that, for much of their history, central authorities treated those who spoke minority languages. A stick, stone or even a pottery cow would be hung around the necks of those who sullied their mouths with the knowledge of Welsh, Provencal, or Scottish Gaelic they had brought from their homes into school. Even after this practice ended, however, some form of humiliation still continued. Helena Drysdale, for instance, sees great similarities between the work of the Scottish and Hebridean writer, Finlay J. Macdonald and the writings of the Breton, Pierre Jakez-Helias in his autobiography, 'The Horse Of Pride'. It was the same world they inhabited, the same challenges and demands they faced.

Drysdale is also good in the way she identifies how people who have two linguistic identities face up to their dilemma. Within Spain, for instance, two minorities - the Catalans and Basques - have reacted in opposite ways. The former have almost abandoned their plans for political independence, settling instead for becoming the economic powerhouse of that country. In contrast, many of the Basque people still dream of their own country, perhaps, in response to the way so many of their people suffered under the rule of Franco.

In addition, she poses many interesting questions; some of which I hear echoed within the borders of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Can a person belong to a locality without speaking its native language? Why is it often incomers who are most enthusiastic about the rights and culture of a minority? What is the value of bilingualism? Do certain peoples use language to exclude - or include - others? What makes a nation?...

The parts of the book that were the most irritating were those distracting the reader from these and similar questions. Over the past few years, there have been an increasing number of travel books that have featured the most outlandish forms of transport. (Good readers will know the type. They possess titles like 'Travelling on a tandem across Turkey.', 'Hopping round Hungary.', 'Scooting through Scandinavia.' ... ) In Ms Drysdale's case, her chosen vehicle is a mobile home, complete with two toddlers blessed with names that would delight anyone fascinated by anagrams and other word-games, Tallulah and Xanthe. While the presence of these children helped the author ask a few important questions about the way humans acquire language, there were times when one felt trapped in a room with a particularly obsessive parent, babbling on about the wonders of their pre-school child.

Yet this is only a quibble. Overall, this is a fascinating and beautifully written book - one that would interest not only those who are bi- or even trilingual, but also anyone who is curious about the way our fellow-human beings interact and communicate with other on this continent that is our home.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Read this book if you are curious about languages - and travel!
Yes I can agree with some of the other reviewers in that at times there is maybe a little too much about the children but at the same time this unusual mix of travelogue,... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Mark Baynes

5.0 out of 5 stars read this great book
I love this book. It weaves together two strands, about the endangered minorities of Europe, and about travelling quite rough with a young family over a period of 18 months. Read more
Published on 1 Mar 2006 by Natalie Smith

4.0 out of 5 stars Travels Among European Minorities
This book is a mixture of a travelogue, investigative journalism and history combined, written by a sympathetic amateur. Read more
Published on 9 Jan 2005 by Laszlo Wagner

2.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating subject but next time leave the kids at home...
I bought this book for its fascinating subject matter but as I read I found myself increasingly distracted and irritated by the presence of two badly-behaved children and by their... Read more
Published on 19 Jan 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars compelling and essential for Europeans
Anyone wanting a deeper understanding of Europe - for whatever reasonns (travel, anthropological, language...) - NEEDS to read this book. Read more
Published on 20 Mar 2002 by richard@arthurone.freeserve.co.uk

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