The World's Major Languages

Цитата:
This is a wonderfully thick, dense, wide-ranging piece of work. If you love delving into the complexities and peculiarities of individual languages, you could get lost in this book for hours on end. I checked out every section on a language &/or family that I'm well informed about, and found the info solid and trustworthy throughout.

The contributors are mostly British and American academic linguists, each of whom wrote a section. While there are differences in style--some iron-gray academic, some a bit more lively and colloquial--each author makes sure that each language receives coverage on all its levels. An abundance of examples and explanations ensures that the descriptions, though highly technical and dense, do not lapse into obscurity. This is probably the best 1-volume work of its kind that I have seen. Its only drawback is that some of the world's most interesting languages (such as Basque and other isolates; pidgins & creoles; and some Native American and Australian languages) receive little space due to the avowed focus on languages with large numbers of speakers. A volume which included sections on minor languages / families would more accurately represent the great variety that exists in languages throughout the world.

Цитата:
Ever wondered how a particular language functions? Well, this book is the one to use! It includes grammatical sketches of languages with sizeable amounts of native speakers. Each section generally contains the some of the following about a language: brief historical background, phonology, morphology, syntax, and if it's not written in Roman letters, a chart for that particular alphabet/syllabary. One of the things I particular liked was giving word-for-word translations then giving a free one. This gives me an idea on how languages like German, Japanese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, etc. form their sentences (like SVO, VSO, SOV). And also for some languages, like Polish and Spanish, it lists the allophones for a phoneme. A word of advice, I highly recommend having at least some knowledge in linguistic terminology and in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), since this book uses them extensively. This is one reference work that you should definitely have.

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