Rev. Dalby Dict of Lgs Re: What languages did crusaders speak?
- From: "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2005 13:52:36 GMT
Andrew Dalby wrote:
>
> Yes, it's me!
>
> I didn't see your review (publishers are not always good at sending on
> copies of reviews! and I live a long way from academic libraries). If
> you happen to have a copy you can attach to an email I'd be really
> grateful.
I had it in Text format, meaning I must've posted it here back when it
was written, so I Paste it below.
If it gets more copies sold, so much the better!
It's quoted on the American paperback reissue. But I did observe that
the couple of mistakes I noted hadn't been corrected ... now we know
why.
> All right, I'll come clean. I enjoyed doing the maps and thought it a
> useful exercise to retain the same scale throughout, though I wasn't
> really satisfied with the printed result. Still, they were the only bit
> of the book that was praised by the TLS reviewer, whose name I
> Freudianly forget. I console myself with the fact that I've never yet
> read a nice review by him.
>
> If you ever see my
>
> /Guide to world language dictionaries\, you'll see that I used more TT
> fonts in that work than any other I knew of at the time -- and on that
> occasion the printing was beautiful, though based on camera-ready copy
> from my old Epson Photo Color.
Maybe NYPL has it. Do you know my *World's Writing Systems*? It has
nearly 100 PostScript fonts (CJK are TT and the printing films weren't
produced by Oxford), quite a few of which I created myself.
> It's good to be here. I intend to stay.
I just cut out s.h.m.; let me know if you fail to see this message!
***
Andrew Dalby, Dictionary of languages: The definitive reference to more
than 400 languages. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Pp.
xviii, 734. ISBN 0-231-11568-7.
Reviewed by Peter T. Daniels
grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
One suspects that the maps were the real reason for writing this
book--nearly two hundred of them (accompanying nearly four hundred
articles), _all to the same scale_ (along with a few others at a much
smaller scale for worldwide coverage); even the software used for making
the maps is fully credited (734). Almost every map plots several
languages, making this a unique and valuable reference (the maps are
vastly preferable to those in Atlas of Languages 1996, see Daniels
1998). It is of course not so comprehensive as Moseley and Asher (1994),
but far easier to use because of the compact format.
The well-written, even absorbing articles range from half a page to more
than eight pages. Their main content is the external history of the
languages and families treated. Unlike the (apparent) competition
Campbell 1991 (see Daniels 1994), Dalby does not attempt grammatical
sketches; occasionally an interesting feature of a language is noted,
and the etymology of each language's name(s) is included. The "themes
which emerge from the book as a whole" are described in the concluding
Acknowledgements: "the multiple social uses of language and oral
literature, and the complex ways in which languages have interacted with
one another" (734). The number words from one to ten are given for many
languages (often in tables comparing a few related languages), along
with occasional quotations of proverbs or brief poetic passages. A
number of script displays are included. The author is Honorary Librarian
at the Institute of Linguists, London (and apparently no relation to the
well-known Africanist David Dalby); South and Southeast Asia and Africa
seem to receive the most intense coverage. The only area that might be
considered weak is the Americas.
>From the jacket flap--but not from the text of the book itself--we learn
that "every language that has official status is included, as well as
all those that have a written literature and 175 'minor' languages with
special historical or anthropological interest." Another criterion is
that every language with at least one million speakers has its own entry
(vii), but some reference is made to many more languages than receive
separate articles; all mentions of languages and places are indexed
(709-33). The Introduction (vii-xvi) succinctly but clearly presents
information about language change and its study; one can read every
(alphabetically arranged) entry via its list of families and isolates
(xiv), if one inserts BASQUE and SUMERIAN and cross-references for
Andamanese (to AUSTROASIATIC LANGUAGES), Elamite (to DRAVIDIAN
LANGUAGES), and Hurro-Urartian (to CAUCASIAN LANGUAGES). One of the few
mistakes in the book is the entry under Altaic for "Tungusic languages
(see MANCHU)," which should simply read "TUNGUSIC LANGUAGES." Most
cross-referencing within articles is done within the narrative; for the
largest families, languages with over 100,000 speakers are named in
lists: Austronesian, Bantu, Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan.
Only two real problems are apparent: most of the script displays and
many highlighted paragraphs are placed on a gray background that is
simply too dark for the material to be easily read; and there are
virtually no bibliographic references. Perhaps reliance on different
sources is responsible for rare inconsistencies, such as the statements
that there are five (17, s.v. Algonquian) or four (139, s.v. Cree) main
dialects of Cree. One of the few outright errors is the listing of
Chipewyan as an alternative name for Ojibwa alongside Chippewa (470); it
is correctly given as a Na-Dene' language s.v. (434). The
transliteration of Sumerian is badly misunderstood (588). Some
cross-references and map references are not quite right.
This book provides the sort of information about the languages of the
world that is most often sought by the curious reader, and as such ought
to be available in every library--and would be right at home in many a
private collection as well.
References
Atlas of languages. 1996. London: Quarto; New York: Facts on File.
Campbell, George L. 1991. Compendium of the world's languages. 2 vols.
London: Routledge.
Daniels, Peter T. 1994. Review of Campbell 1991. Word 45: 245-59.
------. 1998. Review of Atlas of languages 1996. Language in Society 27:
113-17.
Moseley, Christopher, and R. E. Asher (eds.). 1994. Atlas of the world's
languages. London: Routledge.
[I reviewed the new edition of Atlas of Languages in a recent
*Language*.]
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.
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