The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages First Edition

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.

This book is probably the most comprehensive work on the languages of the ancient world, including even the only recently-deciphered Epi-Olmec script of Mesoamerica.However, there is no good definition provided of what is 'ancient' and what is not: should Old Japanese and Old Korean have been included? What about Old Nubian?Surely more could've been written about some of the as-yet undeciphered ancient languages, such as Rongorongo, Meroitic, Linear A, Zapotec, and the Indus script?It's also a bit heavy on Semitic languages: while some languages are grouped with other languages into a single chapter for all of them, each of the ancient Semitic languages has a separate chapter.Some of the ancient languages of Asia, Africa, and the Americas are omitted completely.

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

This book is an invaluable tool for anyone with a passion in ancient philology and linguistics. If you have scoured the internet for information on obscure ancient languages only to find meager tidbits, or if you have been overwhelmed by grammars that are too large and too detailed to be any use, this book will solve your problems. It is certainly a book for the serious student, someone who takes the time to learn the basics of phonetics, morphology, and syntax, but with these easily obtainable keys, the Encyclopedia is a true treasure. It provides enough information to satisfy curiosity, but it does not become so heavy on details that one gets lost in the text; and, if you want to pursue the language further, the recommended texts section at the end of each chapter provides plenty of resources.

As a reference book for an experienced linguist, this book might be excellent. However, I have no formal training in linguistics analysis, so this book did not support me as much as a beginner would need. In particular, some terms were not explained, but I found these within a dictionary and then continued. The histories of each language and the overviews of current understandings about the language's translations were thorough and quite interesting. You rarely see dozens of pages explaining the translations of the more common Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was organized well and the only other improvement I would suggest would be to insert more writing examples with their translations. Marvelous.