The World's Major Languages

Reviews / Votes

'This excellent, thorough resource has an unsurpassed amount of detail for a single-volume survey.' --S. L. Johnson, Eastern Illinois University, Choice Reviews

'Highly recommended. Academic libraries supporting lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers.'--S. L. Johnson, Eastern Illinois University, Choice Reviews

'Originally published in 1987, the second edition of this major handbook contains considerable enough amount of revision and new material to warrant its purchase by those libraries which invested in the original edition' -- Reference Reviews

'The Volume is well constructed for reference access as well as for more in-depth consultation' -- Reference Reviews The World's major languages, ed. by Bernard Comrie. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2009. 911p bibl index; ISBN 9780415353397, $200.00. Reviewed in 2009jul CHOICE.


The second edition of Comrie's classic linguistics reference is just as impressive and valuable a resource as the first. Each of its 52 essays, written by a recognized expert, focuses on a language, group, or family that is widely spoken and/or is of major cultural importance. Most of the original authors have remained since the 1987 edition (CH, Feb'88), and have updated or completely rewritten their chapters and bibliographies as needed. Two new languages, Amharic and Javanese, have been added. The hierarchical organization ("Indo-European Languages," "Romance Languages," and "French" are separate chapters) lets readers see how protolanguages were reconstructed and how their descendant languages developed. While standard elements are discussed in detail--geographic distribution, number of speakers, history, sociocultural background, phonology, morphology, and syntax--important or unique aspects of each language also are emphasized. Thus readers will learn about the Japanese written language, affective language in Tamil, and regional variations of English. Relevant charts listing alphabets, phonemes, verb conjugations, and noun declensions are abundant throughout, as are maps and many other examples of language usage. This excellent, thorough resource has an unsurpassed amount of detail for a single-volume survey. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Academic libraries supporting lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. -- S. L. Johnson, Eastern Illinois University