Languages of the world by Kenneth Katzner
This is possibly my most useful language book of early 80s Beware that my interest in languages started from ca 6 years of age when I successfully decoded Japanese language characters from lyrics mentioned in the documentation of several vinyl records. Later I have used small methods of other languages from our region (Serban , Turkish , Arabic etc ) and next due to my interest in Asian languages i was slightly involved with methods of Chinese Cantonese Hindi (via German ) Punjabi etc
This book has been used for very many times so far and still seems as untouched !
Its structure is relatively simple:
First part discusses languages by families : Indo-European Uralic Altaic Caucasian Dravidian and so on
Second part discusses languages by region individually mainly in 3 parts: foit wirg an example of the language , most times with its native script , then with translation to English then a small introductory text for area is spoken , speakers , special letters (in case Latin or Cyrillic is used ) and words borrowed into English (as for example amuk is borrowed from Malay ). More than 200 languages are referred with also some more exotic , as eg for Europe Frisian , Faroese , Lappish as mentioned Coptic and Aramaic are analyzed for M East , or Burushaski Miao YI Sibo for Asia etc
Third part analyses most significant languages by country . There are many cases languages not referred in the second part to be noticed there .
IN result this book is a must have for a script and language student (better say linguist) though more introductory
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