LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

  "A moving middle-grade mystery about a boy dealing with long-repressed memories of his father as he learns about his Mexican and Haitian heritage while spying on a mysterious stranger during the first weeks..." así se nos describe esta novela de Philippe Diederich que recomiendo a todos los que quieran mejorar su inglés. La novela va dirigida a jóvenes nativos del inglés, y emplea un lenguaje que es asequible a los estudiosos de este idioma. Ya saben que siempre digo que para dominar un idioma, hay que leerlo, pero poco a poco, con lecturas modernas, simples, asequibles, con un inglés moderno de hoy. Esto lo hace Diederich muy bien, mejor que Dickens y Jane Austen, con su inglés decimonónico.    

Language , and the way we speak it, pronounce it and write it, is the way we interact with the world and the way we give information about our character, background, education and lifestyle. So we should be careful. Yesterday someone e-mailed me saying "I replied back." Reply means "to make answer in words or writing." "Back" with "reply" is a needless word. The same as "fall down," "listen up," or "return back." Take note. A few months ago I wrote a short article where I used the expression "get hold of" which was "corrected" by my editor to "get a hold of." As I am tired of discussing language issues, I said nothing. But yesterday I thought of this when I ordered from Amazon the novel Sofrito , by Phillippe Diederich which has been highly recomended. I am eager to read it. The information given is: "In this entertaining debut novel, Frank Delgado tries to save his failing re...