The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages

Une publication savante qui vaut son pesant d'or. Réunissant une trentaine de linguistes en la matière et traitant plus d'une quarantaine de langues ou groupes de langues anciennes. Ouvrage de référence très utile pour les chercheurs ou simplement pour ceux qui veulent approfondir leurs connaissances des langues dans l'antiquité. Le prix de cette "Caverne d'Alibaba" à presuqe 200 dollars est prohibitif pour beaucoup de lecteurs.

I read the glowing reviews before purchasing this. Even then, it is better.The encyclopedia has chapters on 41 attested ancient languages, as well as one on the Afro-Asiatic (with a description of Proto-Semitic) and Indo-European families, as well as an introduction, and a final chapter on language reconstruction. (Forty-five in total.) As noted by other reviewers, it is heavy on the Semitic and Indo-European languages (none of which you would wish left out), but also includes chapters on Sumerian, Elamite, Hurrian, Urartian, Etruscan, Early Georgian, Ancient Chinese, Old Tamil, Mayan and Epi-Olmec. A second edition should consider including Proto-Bantu, and Old Japanese and Korean (as have been mentioned), as well as other (proto-)languages with enough documentation to merit a chapter. (The matter is addressed in the introductory chapter.)The format of the book is similar to Comrie's The World's Major Languages. Languages are given as full a linguistic sketch as possible as well as having their histories and writing systems described and a bibliography given. The chapters average about 30 pages. The book contains several years' worth of reading material. Most of the chapters I have only paged through, but the one on Etruscan suggests you will not find a more comprehensive yet sober reference work available than this.

Expensive and big but really really worth it. Filled with short reference grammars by the best scholars on almost all ancient languages of note. There is no book like it, nor do I think there has ever been. If you're on a budget, plan to get this one as soon as possible, if you are interested in many ancient languages and want something tangible to which you can have frequent and prolonged recourse.**Not as rigorous in the science and discipline of linguistics as I personally would like, but one ought not strain oneself while reaching for the stars. The authors did the very best they could and linguistics is a new science.**

I didn't "use" the book for anything - I just found it very entertaining.

The book requires another book to read it, explaining all the information contained into it (fricative, nouns, and while you are trying to read it, suddenly you find out that the is an Old Hittite, Medium Hittite and Recent Hittite, but which one are we talking about? The book Iam aure is of interest to the people who wrote it, but I thought I could read it and I cannot. A huge disappointment