The world’s most exotic languages are vanishing in a puff of smoke
It is one of academia’s horrible ironies that linguistics, the subject devoted to human communication, has managed to communicate nothing about its many startling and fundamental discoveries to the world outside its university departments. So any book such as this linguistic tour of some of the world’s exotic, hidden and endangered languages is to be welcomed with sobbing gratitude. Almost all the languages Lorna Gibb describes are staples of linguistics course books, but I’m assuming each will come as startling news to a general readership. One which was new to me was the sign language used by native north Americans throughout the Great Plains, and thanks to Gibb, I also
