The Concise Compendium of the World's Languages (2nd edition)

Part of what makes a review a good one is a reliable evaluation of the accuracy of the content in the item under review. So, it is perhaps appropriate to begin with a disclaimer: although a linguist by training, I have no fluency in the vast majority of the world languages surveyed in Campbell and King's The World's Languages. That, by itself, should be no real obstacle in assessing the volume in question. The aim of a work such as this one is precisely to give the interested reader a set of basic information on a number of languages; some...