About the book

There are more than 6,900 languages used around the world today, ranging in size from those with hundreds of millions of speakers to those with only one or two. Linguists now estimate that by the year 2050 as many as half of those will be extinct.

This beautifully designed, engagingly written reference is a panoramic tour of the globe exploring the language situation across the world's geographical regions. Generously illustrated throughout with colour photographs, informative sidebars, and clear maps and graphics, 1000 Languages illuminates the sources, characteristics, and interrelationships of the world's spoken tongues. It looks in detail at the eleven global languages, then delves into the major languages of each world region in turn. Each entry gives a history of the growth and development of the language, details the number of speakers, and traces its geographical spread. The book also tells how to count to ten in more than 250 ways.

The volume includes survey chapters on endangered and extinct languages. A detailed map section at the back tracks the migrations of the major languages, and there is a glossary of linguistic terms, references and an index. A full listing of chapters is:

Cover, UK edition

Cover, USA edition

• Introduction - Peter K. Austin
• World Languages - Nicholas Ostler
• Europe - Glanville Price
• West and North Africa - Phil Jaggar and Friederike Luepke
• Central, East and Southern Africa - Nancy Kula and Lutz Marten
• South Asia - Anju Saxena
• Central, Western and Northern Asia - Kagan Arik
• East and South East Asia - David Bradley
• Pacific and Australia - Nick Thieberger and Rachel Nordlinger
• North, Central and South America - Nicholas Ostler and Jose Antonio Flores Farfan
• Endangered Languages - Lenore Grenoble
• Extinct Languages - Nicholas Ostler

1000 Languages is published by Thames and Hudson (UK edition, June 2008), and University of California Press (USA edition, September 2008).