The languages of the world

by Kenneth Katzner

Book, 1987

Status

Available

Call number

400

Genres

General Nonfiction

All Topics

Nonfiction

Publication

Routledge & Kegan Paul

Description

This third edition of Kenneth Katzner's best-selling guide to languages is essential reading for language enthusiasts everywhere. Written with the non-specialist in mind, its user-friendly style and layout, delightful original passages, and exotic scripts, will continue to fascinate the reader. This new edition has been thoroughly revised to include more languages, more countries, and up-to-date data on populations. Features include: *information on nearly 600 languages *individual descriptions of 200 languages, with sample passages and English translations *concise notes on where each language is spoken, its history, alphabet and pronunciation *coverage of every country in the world, its main language and speaker numbers *an introduction to language families… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member annbury

A series of very short essays on language groups, followed by one-page snapshots of 200 languages. That doesn't leave much room for analysis: the individual language write ups have a paragraph in the language (in the appropriate script), a translation of the paragraph, and a one or two paragraph

sketch of who speaks the language, what is its history, and how it is related to other languages. Not much, but fun for the enthusiast.

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LibraryThing member MsMixte

Not a lot of in-depth analysis of the languages presented, but a wonderful opportunity to see how the various languages LOOK.

Need to know what Nakhi looks like? Urdu? Is it Swedish or Danish?

It's in here...

LibraryThing member Ludi_Ling

A nice book as a quick guide of all the modern languages of the world - I especially liked that it included the standard scripts used for writing each language, as well as a passage written in that language with a handy English translation with which to compare the two. As mentioned in the previous

review, however, each essay was rather short and left little room for anything more than a cursory analysis. This particular edition (1995) is also quite out of date, and thus if you're looking for up-to-date, accurate information on where many of these languages stand, there are better books out there. Still, for those who want an easy lead into the subject, this is well worth giving a go.

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