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Review
'A welcome paperback edition of a wonderfully readable book which transcends its own limits as a super-specialised reference work to become a joyously accessible celebration of the sheer diversity of humankind.' The Scotsman 'Splendid guidebook... an endlessly fascinating achievement.' The Guardian 'A delight, a cornucopia of information, of easy reference, and of rich enjoyment.' The Linguist 'The linguistic waterfront it covers is concomitantly spacious... an astonishing quantity of information... certainly a candidate for any language fan's wishlist.' The Evening Standard
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Covering the political, social and historical background of each language, Dictionary of Languages offers a unique insight into human culture and communication. Every language with official status is included, as well as all those that have a written literature and 175 'minor' languages with special historical or anthropological interest. We see how, with the rapidly increasing uniformity of our culture as media's influence spreads, more languages have become extinct or are under threat of extinction. The text is highlighted by maps and charts of scripts, while proverbs, anecdotes and quotations reveal the features that make a language unique.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A dip into the ocean of The Languages of the World,
By A Customer
This review is from: Dictionary of Languages (Paperback)
If you have an interest in languages, then this may well be the book for you. It deals with over 400 languages in greater or lesser detail, often giving intriguing insights into the language or people discussed. It is not a great reference work, it is not an educational text, you won't even learn any useful phrases (although you may learn to count to ten in hundreds of tongues!). But this is an excellent introduction to the variety of languages and alphabets in the world today (along with important extinct languages), and their geographical distribution. Taken for what it is, the only real criticisms of the book are the maps, which are not as clearly defined as they might be (perhaps in the interest of cost?), and the physical dimensions of the book. The hardback version is about 9 inches tall, and 5 inches thick. You need a table to read this for any length of time. Alphabetically ordered, this book is suitable for dipping in and out of as necessary, and you will find some golden nuggets of information. I bet I know of a Western European Language spoken by over 10 million people that you don't!!!
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good for browsing, and for reference,
By clive-nospam-amazon@nsict.org (Cambridgeshire, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Dictionary of Languages (Hardcover)
While this book serves its function as a reference work admirably, providing quick access to useful information on pretty-much any language or dialect in the world, it is equally fascinating as a book to browse. The information is certainly extensive, and seems to be reliable and unbiased.Sadly, the book is not without its faults. The typography is very poor in places - tables of correspondence between other scripts and the Roman alphabet are often misaligned so that considerable effort is required to work out what's what. The maps are extremely crude, though functional. Informative and useful though it is, this book is not a thing of beauty. Also, the book explicitly excludes languages other than naturally-evolved spoken and written languages. This means it contains nothing on sign languages, nor on synthetic languages such as Esperanto and Lojban - omissions that are a minor shame.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
unputdownable,
By sally tarbox (aylesbury bucks uk) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Dictionary of Languages (Hardcover)
Fascinating book to browse, with a couple of pages given over to each of 400+ languages. With examples of different scripts, comparisons of related languages printed side by side and numerals, anyone with an interest in the subject can peruse the 700 pages for hours. Dalby includes extinct languages; from the section on Sogdian (extinct language of Uzbekistan) for example, you can compare their numerals with those of some modern languages spoken in the Pamirs and see the strong similarity. It doesnt go into any one area in depth but it gives you basic information to study further if you wish
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