Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience

A comprehensive guide to the languages of the world.

I was particularly interested in reading about speakers of Burushaski, the language of a distant valley below the Himalayas and was pleased to discover something new.

An interesting book, not scholarly in tone, Just a fun guide to unusual languages.

I really enjoy reading about linguistics and languages and was really happy to receive an ARC of this book :)
Overall, I have to say I was a bit disappointed that the linguistics content was scarce. There weren't many facts about the languages. I was glad when there were some, and translations of the Little Prince were used to compare languages, but only in the Latin script even for languages with other scripts and without guidance on pronunciation or many interesting insights.
The focus is also quite heavily on Indo-European languages, but the list of languages and language islands is still quite extensive. What was interesting was the focus on geographical and historical data to explain how language islands appeared. For example, I learnt quite a few facts about Armenian rose jam in Venice or Brazil areas having Venetian as a co-official language. But not that much about the languages themselves, which is why my rating isn't higher. I could still feel that the author is passionate about the topic and wanted to transmit this.
I want to thank Collins Reference and NetGalley for gifting me a free ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A comprehensive “geographical” survey of languages. However its coverage was a little uneven in places.

The book sets out to “illustrate the relationship between people, language and geography” (Kindle 3%) and it does that well, providing lots of information about languages and their current distribution in the world. It covers all the continents, and it also provides information about unexpected enclaves, such as the South American Welsh speakers.

At times the information was a bit ‘uneven.’ We hear, for example, that the Basque language stands out as being an isolate with no similarities to other languages (5%). But what makes the Basque language so unique? Is it its grammar, its vocabulary… or what? Sadly we get no information to explain.

This is disappointing as other languages are introduced with more explanatory description. For example,e we hear that a Seri language used on Tiburon Island in the Gulf of California has an unusually large number of words to denote relationships within a family. It even has a word for newspapers, “hapaspoi” which means “paper that tells lies” (15%).

At times sociological detail comes to the fore. We hear that the village of Gapun in Papua New Guinea speak Tayap and have a custom so that a new mother gets to live on her own in a hut until the baby first smiles (12%). We also hear about Armenian monks making jam (67%). These are interesting sociological details, but if space in the book was tight, I would have preferred if the book had edited out the sociology in order to provide more information about the languages.

Sometimes the descriptions of the languages seemed a little incomplete, and even misleading. For example we are told that the Hadza language only includes two numerals, the numbers one and two. After that the word “lots” is used (7%). The impression is given that this is a uniquely distinguishing feature of the language. But then, later in the book, we hear essentially the same description about Piraha (94%).

When the book discussed Tasmanian languages it noted that Palawa Kani is a reconstructed “artificial” language which combines words from differing Tasmanian languages (77%). The mention of an “artificial” language made me wonder about other artificial languages like Klingon and Esperanto, but they do not get a mention in the book. Perhaps they weren’t deemed to have a geographical presence?

I also wondered why “working languages” were not included. For example Latin was used as a working language for the 2000 bishops who met for the Second Vatican Council in 1965. It is still, often, a language option for meetings at the Vatican, although its usage is in marked decline. So it does have a degree of geographical presence which might have made it worth mentioning ?

Overall, this is an informative book which is written in a way which makes it accessible to readers of any background. Readers can quibble with some of the editorial decisions, but given the limited scope of the book, it can also be enjoyed as doing, broadly, what it said it would do.

For language specialists I felt it would become something for flicking through in the smallest room, as it was never comprehensive or scholarly enough, yet for the average curious browser (which was how I approached it) it became a little too dry, and not quite what I expected. It introduces us, in very friendly manner, to language isolates, and language islands, the first an endemic one-off, linguistically, the second a chunk of people speaking a known language we find elsewhere, but in an unexpected place when compared to what their neighbours are speaking.

To respond in the base way, to the book's very title, well the 'atlas' part is definitely correct, for this conveys the geography of the languages very well, and of course their history, in showing in text and image what cultural grounding these isolated communities live with today – whether they have their own schools, churches, festivals, newspapers, traffic signs etc. Some of this I still found absolutely fascinating – how there is a diaspora of Sorbs ("who?", I hear you say) that went SE to the Barossa Valley of Australia, and W to Texas – but a lot that was a little too dry. But while I never expected to learn any lingo, I did think, as a word fan, that I might gain a bit of what makes each language an 'unusual' one – extended, unpronouncable quotes from "The Little Prince" didn't get me to where I thought I'd be.

I didn't know quite what to expect from these pages, yet it wasn't exactly what I thought I was letting myself in for, but that doesn't mean I don't wish this success. Three and a half stars

Fascinating book with maps, colour photographs and illustrations. Anyone interested in language, linguistics and just geography in general would enjoy this book. Fascinating facts about origins of languages, number of speakers and how old estimated. A book to refer back to and keep.

3.5 stars rounded up. This is an interesting book that provides a trip round the world via the languages spoken. Written in conversational tones this is not a challenging book but rather an introduction, acting as an encyclopaedia, to lesser spoken and more unusual languages. A vast variety of languages are written about with a few paragraphs each also containing information about the associated people, culture and history.

This is very much a book for dipping in and out of and for providing a first step into personal further research into specific languages. Reading through it I made note of a few languages and regions I would like to do some more research about. A great book for those looking to expand their knowledge on geography and culture.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I learned a lot and I found this book informative and well researched.
I don't think it's a book for linguists or anyone who's working on this field but it's an excellent way to discover facts about less know or nearly forgotten languages.
I enjoyed it and learned something new.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

A nice little book to dip in and out of. Lots of maps and illustrations. I'm sure a physical copy would make a great coffee table book.

Such an interesting book! I loved reading about little-known languages and I loved learning about the different categories and how they came to be.

I was disappointed with this book. It starts with a hefty disclaimer:

"Please note that the author of this book is not a linguist and the book is not intended to be read as a scientific work. Instead, it’s simply a collection of some interesting linguistic curiosities and should be viewed as such."

It's hard to call this a book. It really is a collection of snippets from Wikipedia. There's no real description of what makes a language, nor how they evolve. In fact, the book rarely tells us anything about a language other than it exists.
Once in a while, it mentions how a counting system works ("one, two, many") but it never attempts to tell us any of the language features. Is this language peculiar in not having a past tense? Does that language have different prefixes for male and female nouns? Do these people not have words for left and right - instead referring to East and West? No idea. If it isn't in the first paragraph of the encyclopedia entry, it doesn't get a mention.

Instead of an actual investigation into these languages, everything is written with hedging statements. "It is believed...", and "According to legend (and claims on social media)...", and "It is assumed..."

The book contains translated passages of "The Little Prince" to compare languages. Again, these have been lifted wholesale from another book. And, again, they don't tell us anything interesting about the languages. What is the etymology of "Dywysog"? What does that tell us about how the language evolved?

There are a few photos of some of the more unusual written languages - but they're nothing more than a passing mention.

Similarly, there's a single paragraph devoted to whistling languages! And it's little more than a list. How do whistling languages work? Are there any similarities between them? The book is silent.

As a coffee-table book, it's fine. Nice large photos (again, taken from Wikipedia) and some light text to skim. But if you want any information about languages and what makes them unusual, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.

I’m fascinated with languages the people the culture that is born from the different countries geographic areas This was a fascinating read for me learning about people’s unusual languages ,geography from around the world.This is wonderfully written and illustrated I learned something new on every page.Will be recommending,

Let me preface my review by making it clear, I have a degree in Linguistics. I have spent the last three years studying languages, dialects, accents and everything in between. I find great joy and entertainment from reading about said 'unusual languages'. This book was entertaining and well explained. I can see how it would make for a good gift for any language lover, the images and maps added to the overall reading experience. There was clearly a lot of research put into this. However, the linguist in me wanted more information. I wanted more detail, more empirical evidence and more explanation behind these oddities. The author addresses this and clarifies that this is not a scientific book, so I understand the lack of depth in some of the chapters. Nonetheless, it was a good read and I came away knowing more than I did before.

Hmmm... I saw this book falling down a hole between two markets. For language specialists I felt it would become something for flicking through in the smallest room, as it was never comprehensive or scholarly enough, yet for the average curious browser (which was how I approached it) it became a little too dry, and not quite what I expected. It introduces us, in very friendly manner, to language isolates, and language islands, the first an endemic one-off, linguistically, the second a chunk of people speaking a known language we find elsewhere, but in an unexpected place when compared to what their neighbours are speaking.

We easily skim through a few isolates, even if the author takes almost every opportunity to tell us what one is, which we understood the first time, thanks. More convoluted are the language islands, such as the one formed of a couple hundred thousand who fled eastern Bulgaria and are now in the extreme SW of Ukraine and a smidge of Moldova. Pre-technology days, if they wanted to speak to anyone in their own tongue who was not a neighbour, they would have had to take a cart right across Romania's coastal area. With Serbians in the 'wrong' places, and Croat heard today in three villages somewhat near Bari, Italy, we learn there is a lot to blame the Ottomans for.

To respond in the base way, to the book's very title, well the 'atlas' part is definitely correct, for this conveys the geography of the languages very well, and of course their history, in showing in text and image what cultural grounding these isolated communities live with today – whether they have their own schools, churches, festivals, newspapers, traffic signs etc. Some of this I still found absolutely fascinating – how there is a diaspora of Sorbs ("who?", I hear you say) that went SE to the Barossa Valley of Australia, and W to Texas – but a lot that was a little too dry. But while I never expected to learn any lingo, I did think, as a word fan, that I might gain a bit of what makes each language an 'unusual' one – extended, unpronouncable quotes from "The Little Prince" didn't get me to where I thought I'd be.

Still, this did at times manage to inform in a quite entertaining way; the book being more pleasurable to the random browser like me when it's dealing with places and peoples with whom you have affinity. Even hearing about tongues such as Tischlbongarisch brings a novelty to the day, although of course it's a lot more than trivial to the people who speak it. It's ironic for me to say I didn't know quite what to expect from these pages, yet it wasn't exactly what I thought I was letting myself in for, but that doesn't mean I don't wish this success. Three and a half stars.

If you like obscure facts then you'll love this book. I was even able to look up the origins of the Warao language which is spoken by a tribe in Guyana, where my wife comes from. She is not of that tribe but we wrote a book that mentioned the language - and so my own love of random facts comes out! I ran and told her when I read that part.

It's not really a straight read-through kind of book but the sort of thing you'd pick up when you felt curious and wanted something really different to read. Whoever took on this project obviously had a love of the subject and it shows. This is what it takes and thank God for digital publishing.

Recommended if you like unusual subjects.

This is a beautifully produced collection of “interesting linguistic curiosities”, namely the obscure tongues still spoken. It is a colourful atlas of over 200 languages, and the indigenous people who speak them, pinpointed on a world map and described in short, easily digestible sections. Richly illustrated with maps and photographs of the regions, it is clearly written and easy to follow and suitable for a broad age range.