This third edition of Kenneth Katzner's best-selling guide to languages is essential reading for language enthusiasts everywhere. Written with the non-specialist in mind, its user-friendly style and layout, delightful original passages, and exotic scripts, will continue to fascinate the reader. This new edition has been thoroughly revised to include more languages, more countries, and up-to-date data on populations.Features include:*information on nearly 600 languagesindividual descriptions of 200 languages, with sample passages and English translationsconcise notes on where each language is spoken, its history, alphabet and pronunciationcoverage of every country in the world, its main language and speaker numbersan introduction to language families