The World's Chief Languages

Allen & Unwin, 1954. Third Edition. hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 0x0x0. 1954 third edition, George Allen and Unwin (London), 6 x 8 3/4 inches tall x 1 3/4 inches thick orange cloth hardcover in publisher's unclipped dust jacket, gilt lettering to spine, illustrated with maps, 663 pp. Very slight rubbing and edgewear to boards, especially lower edges. Otherwise, a near fine copy - clean, bright and unmarked - in an only slightly edgeworn dust jacket with a bit of sun toning to spine but which is nicely preserved and displayed in a clear archival Brodart sleeve. ~SP38~ [3.0P] Mario Andrew Pei (1901-1978) was an Italian-born American linguist and polyglot who wrote a number of popular books known for their accessibility to readers without a professional background in linguistics. Dr. Pei was widely admired for being wittily fluent in several languages, besides his native Italian and his adopted English, and for being able in his many books to make philology and etymology fascinating subjects for the general reader. He moved into the vanguard of language scholars in 1949 with the publication of his acclaimed volume, The Story of Language, which enjoyed great success. Making technical information accessible to the nonspecialist, the book dealt enjoyably with the sounds and structure of languages, their family relationships; dialects, jargon and slang.