The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language,   ISBN:9780521559676

Customer Rating: 

Based on this and his many other excellent books, David Crystal is a world heritage treasure! This book provides a stimulating introduction to language in a comprehensive way that I have found nowhere else. However, since its 1997 publication date there are exciting new developments in understanding language and its origins, including language acquisition, neurolinguistics, and semantics. We would love a new edition and hope the marvelous author has nothing else to do for the foreseeable future! Please convince him, Cambridge University Press!

Customer Rating: 

This is a useful, complete and wonderful book, which person interested in language should have. It's topics are simply great!!

Olga Ocaña

Customer Rating: 

Everything that you could ever have wanted to know about the way language works is in here (along with many other things that you probably had never even thought of). From the minds ability to comprehend certain sights and sounds as forms of communication and how it deciphers them to writing styles, changes and progression in languages and grammatical structures and nuances in voice level and tone used to alter understanding of a particular syllable, this book's got it all. I have to confess to being overawed when I first opened the book and then marvelling at the detail contained therein. Be warned though, this book is not for beginners in any field of study. Those with a strong interest in linguistics though should definitely invest in this treasure. There's so much in here it's staggering.

Customer Rating: 

David Crystal's Encylcopedia of Language is an excellent and readable book for lay-people like myself. I often come to it for information on a particular language-related question, or else I'll just open it up at random and see where I land.

There are plenty of diagrams and coloured pictures throughout, as well and quite a few interesting stories placed in vignettes.

As other reveiwers have pointed out, a huge range of topics are included here. I'm yet to find an aspect of language that hasn't been covered in some way.

Customer Rating: 

This book is a linguaphile and language lover's delight, to read or just to browse like a coffee table book. It covers just about every major topic in the study of language you can think of, from traditional classical and comparative philology and linguistics to modern developmental and neurological studies of language.

The book is comprised of 11 major sections and 65 smaller sections, with 8 appendices devoted to various topics, and there is an extensive glossary of linguistic terms as well as a table giving essential information about almost 1000 of the world's languages. Although a scholarly book, it's well written and Crystal never gets overly pedantic or dry. This is no doubt one of the most comprehensive and detailed compendia of information for the general reader about the subject of language ever written.

After reading this, you'll be more than ready to tackle a formal or more technical introductory text in linguistics, if you want to continue your studies. If you do, I highly recommend David Lyons's classic, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, now out of print but worth getting if you can find a used copy. If you can't find that there are several other recent texts that are quite good. But if you decide to stick with this book, you'll still have learned a lot. Whichever way you decide, good luck and happy reading.