The Atlas of Unusual Languages: An exploration of language, people and geography

Ever since reading History of the Word many years ago, I have been fascinated by language and how they do or don't travel.This book works in a similar theme and offers some interesting and quirky facts about the world's languages and the people who speak them.Highly recommended.

The title is "Atlas of Unusual Languages" but over half the book is devoted to not-very-unusual languages which are spoken in places where you wouldn't expect (German spoken in North America, for example). Even for the unusual languages which the book covers (e.g. language isolates such as Basque) there's almost nothing about what makes the languages interesting or different from a linguistic point of view. If your interest is languages, rather than where they are spoken, you won't find much here.

The author, Zoran Nikolic grew up in today’s Serbia, which was then called Yugoslavia fascinated by the meaning of words in different languages, he not only knew Serbo-Croatian but also Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin. On top of that several major and minor languages were spoken in Yugoslavia; Slovenian, Macedonian, Albanian, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, Czech, Italian, Polish and Ruthenian so with that pedigree we couldn’t be in safer hands when exploring the more unusual languages. I grew up bilingual so language has been a fascination for me throughout my life. This is not a book for linguists, it is not intended to be read as a scientific work but a beautiful exploration of linguistic curiosities. I found it quite delightful to read about the amazing ways humans have evolved language in their desire to initially communicate verbally and in time to transcribe the verbal into the written e.g. I was intrigued by the ‘marks’ on the cover that were not familiar to me and delighted to discover the (Taa) !Xoo referred to the click languages of Africa. I won’t spoil the discovery for fellow readers by giving any more details about it.This book ably presents a selection of current ‘language islands’ from around the world. Using the analogy of an island, ‘Language Islands’ are languages that are spoken although surrounded by one or more significantly larger languages.This is a truly beautiful book a gem for anyone interested in diversity of language and people.

📝 ‘Please note that the author of this book, introduced on page 240, is not a linguist and the book is not intended to be read as a scientific work. Instead, it’s simply a collection of some interesting linguistic curiosities and should be viewed as such.’From page 240: ‘About the author’:📝 ‘...this book, which I try (in layman’s terms) to bring together in one place various unusual languages from all over our planet. Yes, I am aware that the speakers of these languages would not find their languages unusual but I have observed this ‘unusualness’ from the perspective of the largest number of people, who speak more numerous and better-known languages...’The current stock images and ‘LOOK INSIDE’ facility above give a good insight into the contents, to see if it is the style for you.From the back cover (image below refers):📝 ‘Communication through the spoken and written word has evolved over the centuries to form a complex map of language use.While some languages dominate large areas of the modern world, many have survived only in small pockets.This book explores a selection of these languages in current use around the world.’ooOoo~ ‘THE ATLAS OF UNUSUAL LANGUAGES: An exploration of language, people and geography’:This is a neat softcover book that measures around 15 cm x 21.5 cm and opens to 240 matte-finish pages each with a lime green border ~ that shade following through to the spine.The inside cover pages, front & back, are maps with the relevant page numbers referenced for quick reference.The publication is split into 3 main SECTIONS, namely:~ LANGUAGE ISOLATES (pg 9~50)~ INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE ISLANDS (pg 51~180)~ LANGUAGE ISLANDS AROUND THE WORLD (pg181~235)...sandwiched between an INTRODUCTION & a 2-page GLOSSARY.The text is a good size in black throughout, broken up by images & maps.The following short paragraph from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella, ‘The Little Prince’, is used to compare the various languages (from page 93 ~ image below refers):English:📝 ‘Oh, little prince! Bit by bit I came to understand the secrets of your sad little life. For a long time you had found your only entertainment in the quiet pleasure of looking at the sunset. I learnt that new detail on the morning of the fourth day, when you said to me: I am fond of sunsets.’Pages 238 & 239 are credit acknowledgements + the information sources.[19 images attached © Zoran Nikolić & HarperCollins Publishers/2021]

It is thoroughly interesting learning where languages have originated from, how they have moved across the globe and changed/evolved due to this.It is split into three main topics: Language Isolates, Indo-European Language Islands and Language Islands around the world. Each topic is then split into subtopics, mostly going through the continents or language types (e.g. Romance languages).It is very easy to read with illustrations of maps and photographs to split up the text and also show the movement and spread of languages.I learnt a lot about my own languages as well as the origins of others. I never thought that I would find this topic fascinating but Zoran Nikolic has made it very approachable.

This is a really enjoyable and super informative read and would be great for readers with an interest in linguistics, history, and perhaps even anthropology.The book itself runs in an A-Z format, starting with a section detailing Language Isolates before moving into Indo-European language groups and then Rest of the World language groups.Throughout the book, there are gorgeous colour images and the writing is accessible and fresh, giving lots of information without dumbing down or being patronising, and there is a good range of language groups and regions covered.

This book is disgracefully misrepresented by the publishers. It is absolutely NOT a book about unusual languages! It's overwhelmingly a book about very common languages like German, sometimes spoken in unusual places, like Namibia, or isolated pockets in the Americas - what the author calls "language islands". The information provided even about these 'language islands' is brief and very basic, not nearly the depth of say a Wikipedia article, more akin to what you might read in a primary school textbook. I returned my copy to Amazon.