Reviews for Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference to More than 400 Languages

The average rating for Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference to More than 400 Languages based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-01-30 00:00:00 Bill Bridger I checked this book out looking for some kind of reference guide that would help me understand the breadth of difference between languages in the world. I know enough of European languages, Russian, and Japanese to understand what they have in common (subjects, predicates, direct objects, adjectives, conjunctions, adverbs, tenses, syllables, etc...) and what they don't (word meaning, word order, information carried in suffixes, categories, gender, etc...) but I don't have a good feeling for how languages outside that range vary. Unfortunately, that wasn't provided in this book. It gave a little background on the history of the speakers of a language, the numbers from one to ten, and a few anecdotes about each language, but nothing like the kind of systematic description I was looking for. The reason I am looking is that I don't want to artificially restrict the way my robotic systems reason based on representing meanings of words in an English-centric way. What kinds of concepts are out there that would require many words to get across in English? What kinds of alien tenses and categories are used in the languages of the Amazon basin, Tahiti, or New Zealand? I guess I can probably find something online, but I don't really know what I'm looking for exactly.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-04-03 00:00:00 Sandra Dedrick This is an excellent book (and gift idea) for anyone who is fascinated by languages. Even though it's more meant to be a reference book, I read it cover to cover and found it very enjoyable and digestible as well. There are two things that I would love to see in future editions: #1 There is no entry for any of the sign languages or sign language in general (though they are mentioned in the glossary). #2 The book is arranged alphabetically, which would be one's assumption for someone who is using it as a reference book... however, I think it would be much better if it was broken down into language families instead. I ended up skipping around and marking the entries I read rather than reading it in a linear fashion, but I did just start with A and read the first hundred pages in order. This made some of the entries more difficult to appreciate until I got further into the book and read about their language families.