Before the first appearance of the Atlas of the World's Languages in 1993, all the world's languages had never been accurately and completely mapped. The Atlas depicts the location of every known living language, including languages on the point of extinction.
This fully revised edition of the Atlas offers:
- up-to-date research, some from fieldwork in early 2006
- a general linguistic history of each section
- an overview of the genetic relations of the languages in each section
- statistical and sociolinguistic information
- a large number of new or completely updated maps
- further reading and a bibliography for each section
- a cross-referenced language index of over 6,000 languages.
Presenting contributions from international scholars, covering over 6,000 languages and containing over 150 full-colour maps, the Atlas of the World's Languages is the definitive reference resource for every linguistic and reference library.
This new edition of the Atlas is divided into 10 sections, each edited by a leading authority in its field:
1) North America (Lyle Campbell, Victor Golla, Marianne Mithun, Mauricio Mixco, Ives Goddard)
2) Meso-America (Terrence Kaufman)
3) South America (Terrence Kaufman.)
4) Australasia & the Pacific (Darrell Tryon)
5) East and South East Asia (David Bradley)
6) Southern Asia (R.E.Asher)
7) Northern Asia & Eastern Europe (Bernard Comrie)
8) Western Europe (Lachlan Mackenzie)
9) Middle East & North Africa (A.K. Irvine)
10) Sub-Saharan Africa (Benji Wald)
Biography
R.E. Asher is Emeritus Professor at the Dept of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Edinburgh, a world authority on Dravidian languages and author of several books, including our descriptive grammar of Malayalam and Colloquial Tamil. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Sahitya Akademi (India's National Academy of Letters), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi.Christopher Moseley worked for two decades for the BBC World Service, specialising in Baltic affairs, and is now a freelance translator and editor. He has a particular interest in endangered and minority languages. He is the author of Colloquial Estonian (1994) and Colloquial Latvian (1996) and the general editor of the Routledge/Curzon Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages (2006).
Reviews of the second edition:
'This atlas is undoubtedly a valuable reference work for those interested in languages of the world. This updated and augmented edition is highly recommended for collection in major libraries, be they academic or public.' The Linguist List
"The new edition of this engaging and superbly organized atlas is intended to 'map as far as current knowledge allows the location of all living languages no matter how small the number of speakers'...The Atlas is highly recommended for academic and large public libraries as well as for libraries that havefound the first edition useful."-- Christine Whittington, Booklist
Reviews of the first edition:
'This is a monumental production and provides a definitive analysis of the known languages of the world. The publishers, the editors and the authors of individual sections deserve the warmest congratulations on producing a scholarly work of reference of primary importance for anyone concerned with the study of contemporary languages.' - The Year in Reference
‘This atlas’s extraordinary attention to detail is astonishing’ - The Economist
‘Routledge’s monolithic new Atlas of the World’s Languages provides an unprecedented account of the linguistic composition of the world…So large a contribution is the atlas that I predict it will stimulate its own cottage industry of geographical linguistic research’ Mark Pagel, Nature
