"The book contains charming anecdotes, witty sidebars, and attractive illustrations ... Little's strong sense of humor never overwhelms her love of languages in this fascinating yet educational introduction to linguistics for a wide, pop-savvy audience." - Publishers Weekly

"If you like language, you'll love Biting the Wax Tadpole. Elizabeth Little has mused on, used, and even misused many of the planet's languages, and this fascinating and often hilarious book gives a full account of her adventures." - Ben Greenman, author of A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both and Superbad

"Biting the Wax Tadpole is witty, sassy, and laugh-out-loud funny. Little convincingly demonstrates that, as she puts it, 'language is nothing less than a great adventure.' So is her book." - Kitty Burns Florey, author of Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog

In a decidedly unstuffy look at the staid world of languages, Elizabeth Little uses her favorite examples from languages dead, difficult, and just plain made-up to reveal how language study is the ticket to traveling the world without leaving the comforts of home. Little's exploration of "word travel" includes Shona, a language lacking distinct words for "blue" or "green," why Icelandic speakers must decide if the numbers 1-4 are plural, which language is the only one lacking verbs, and just what, exactly, the Swedish names of IKEA products mean.

Fully illustrated with hilarious sidebars, Biting the Wax Tadpole also addresses classic cases of mistranslation. For example, when Chinese shopkeepers tried to find a phonetic written equivalent of Coca-Cola, one set of characters they chose were pronounced "ke-kou ke-la." It sounded right, but it translated literally as "bite the wax tadpole." Not quite what Coke had in mind, but in this off-kilter ode to the words of the world, it's just another example of language taking you someplace interesting.