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The Languages of the World
 
 
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The Languages of the World (Paperback)

by Kenneth Katzner (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Routledge; 3rd Revised edition edition (15 Dec 1994)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0415118093
  • ISBN-13: 978-0415118095
  • Product Dimensions: 19.9 x 13 x 2.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 293,701 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description
The Languages of the World has long been the essential handbook for all language students and linguists. It has now been revised and updated to take into account recent developments in linguistics and changes in the world map. This concise reference source provides the reader with a wealth of information on the world's languages and the samples of native script give a fascinating insight in to the structures of many unfamiliar and exotic languages. The book contains: a survey of the world's language families - charts help you see clearly the connections between the different languages descriptions of 200 individual languages - examples from native literature are provided in the original script, translated and discussed a country by country survey - provides a geographical perspective and statistical information on a number of speakers A short handy lay-persons guide to 200 of the World's languages.

About the Author
Prior to his recent retirement, Kenneth Katzner worked for the US government and also served as an editor on a number of international encyclopedias and English dictionaries. He is also author of a large English-Russian/Russian-English Dictionary. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Extremely superficial guide to some writing systems, 11 Nov 2003
By Esben Alfort (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Languages of the World (Paperback)
This book ought to have a different name, as it doesn't actually tell you much about the languages, but rather about which letters do and do not exist in each language, which is rather irrelevant information. For a linguist, the text is nearly completely useless. The one good thing to say about this work is that it supplies examples from a lot of languages, something which is otherwise hard to find in one or few books. It would be extremely more useful for me as a linguist if there was a translitteration and if possible a quasi-translation under each line of the texts, as a text written in an asian script you have never heard of gives you nothing more than a superficial impression of how it looks - it certainly has nothing to do with the language that it is used to write.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars good, but a bit superficial, 4 Dec 2002
This review is from: The Languages of the World (Paperback)
This is a good book, not a great book. It gives a lot of general information about a lot of languages, which is really nice. A table at the beginning provides a good, quick reference to the world's languages' "family tree". Following this, the first part of the book discusses the various language families, with more detail about languages in the Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic branches. The second part, covering about 200 individual languages, is really what the book is all about. This section is organized by place rather than language family, so the first section is "Languages of Europe" and the other sections are for the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Asia, Oceania, the Western Hemisphere, and Africa. There is also one more thrown in for good measure: "An artificial language", which discusses Esperanto. This organization is perhaps a bit odd from a linguist's perspective, but it does work very well for browsing (which is really what this book is geared towards). Fortunately, if you are looking for information on a specific language, there is an index of all the languages mentioned in the book. For each language there is a sample of the its script and a short description, usually identifying where it is spoken, how many speakers, relations to other languages and so on. The length and quality of these descriptions vary. Finally, the third part of the book is a country-by-country survey, arranged in alphabetical order. This gives each country's total population, languages spoken, and the number of speakers of those languages.

Now, although this all sounds really good (and it is), there are major weaknesses in the book. This comes primarily from the fact that the author has obviously got his information from countless different sources, as no one person can be an expert in all languages. However, it makes the book hard to trust. For instance, because I know a bit about Celtic languages, I looked them up here. The author refers to Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic simply as "Gaelic", implying that they are the same language but simply called different things in Scotland and Ireland. This is simply not the case. Furthermore, he states that there 100,000 speakers of Irish in Northern Ireland. Again, I know that this is at best a misleading figure. Irish is dead in Northern Ireland as native language, and there are not even that many speakers in the Republic of Ireland. Presumably this number comes from figures relating to the number of people who have done Irish at school, or who otherwise "have a little Irish". All of this makes me question everything else I read in the book.

In short, this book is nice for getting an overview of many languages. I don't regret buying it, but I was disappointed. If you want a quick reference to the world's many languages, this is it. But only use it for browsing, not as a reference, and realize that it only mentions 600 languages--about 1/10th of the world's languages.

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A fun, diverse little introduction, 30 April 1998
By A Customer
Despite its claim and the claims of previous amazon.com reviewers, Katzner's book offers only the tiniest of insights into the vast store of languages covered. Almost no entry goes beyond simply phonetics, and there is little or no hint of grammer -- sorely missing. Many entries even fail to indicate whether or not a particular language has a written and writing history. Yet the book is a lot of fun, thanks to its topic, and offers a nice perspective. Linguists, however, looking for solid information on languages should look elsewhere.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent overview of the world's languages
I really enjoyed reading this book. The problem that the author faces is that each of us would probably have chosen a different selection of languages according to our own... Read more
Published on 6 Oct 2003 by Richard

4.0 out of 5 stars Very nice book
I thought that this book gave a very good introduction to the amateur linguist like myself to the better known and some of the lesser known languages of the world. Read more
Published on 4 Oct 2003 by Richard

5.0 out of 5 stars really fun to read
this is such an enjoyable book. i know it is not a poetry book, but i also wanted to thank the author of including a great korean poem "the azalea"
Published on 29 Jun 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars An enormously useful book!
Here at work (a translation company), we use this book constantly for reference. It has been invaluable for quickly finding concise information and background on specific... Read more
Published on 1 Jan 1998

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