The Atlas of Languages: The Origin and Development of Languages Throughout the World

This atlas of world languages divides them into their proper families, and provides excellent illistrations and pertinent photographs. Whether certain facts are erroneous or not does not affect the overall untility of the book.

As a first attempt to collect linguistical maps of different parts of the world in one volume, this book is a must for all those interested in linguistics. The TEXT, written by a team of expert linguists, is clear, easily readable, yet scholarly and precise. More recent theories of language relations like the Austric family or the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis are included. At some points the book (like linguistics in general) tends to be a bit "indo-europocentric", e.g. by forcing the concept of "cases" to languages where this is not particularly meaningful, or by failing to discuss features like grammatical gender, which seem natural to Indo-European and Afroasian speakers only. The size and quality in which the MAPS are reproduced would have allowed a much more detailed and precise depiction of the distribution of languages. As it is, the atlas resembles elementary school history atlases where details are deliberately reduced so that kids are not confused. While the text repeatedly calls attention to the traps of defining linguistic affiliation on the basis of political considerations, in many maps the linguistic borders follow those of states with a cheerful naivity (the Balkan map on p. 35 being a most notorious example). Beside the maps showing the distribution of individual languages, in such a book one might perhaps also expect schematic maps showing the large scale distribution of individual linguistic features (e.g. SVO word order, ergativity, genders, agglutination etc.)over the world. This could have been done easily at the cost of the nice but irrelevant pictures of people in folk costumes. A reader wishing to see polynesian vahines in full dance gear should probably subscribe to National Geographic instead of buying a book called Atlas of Languages. (In fact, the supplements of that magazine often also offer linguistic maps of much higher quality than those in this book.) The last chapter of the book about writing systems is an extra bonus, well written and illustrated. All in all, a good first try -can we expect some improvements in the graphics for the second edition?

For anyone interested in language and languages, this is a feast of information. Comprehensively conceived and beautifully presented, the work encompasses prehistorical and historical origins, geographical distributions, differences and similarities of vocabulary and grammar, writing systems, and more, in their historical, political, and social context. Particular attention is given to the issues of languages as "fragile ecology", with the over 6,000 spoken today expected to diminish by 90% over the next century. Generously illustrated, with numerous photos, drawings, maps, charts, tables, and informative sidebars, plus the excellent glossary, bibliography, and index. Highly recommended for the reference shelf of the general reader, and especially for those interested in the future of language and languages.