Before the first appearance of the Atlas of the World's Languages in 1993, all the world's languages had never been accurately and completely mapped. The Atlas depicts the location of every known living language, including languages on the point of extinction.

This fully revised edition of the Atlas offers: Up-to-date research, some from fieldwork in early 2006 A general linguistic history of each section An overview of the genetic relations of the languages in each section Statistical and sociolinguistic information A large number of new or completely updated maps Further reading and a bibliography for each section A cross-referenced language index of over 6,000 languages

Presenting contributions from international scholars, covering over 6,000 languages and containing over 150 full-colour maps, the Atlas of the World's Languages is the definitive reference resource for every linguistic and reference library.

This new edition of the Atlas is divided into 10 sections, each edited by a leading authority in its field:

1) North America (Lyle Campbell, Marianne Mithun, Mauricio Mixco, Ives Goddard, Victor Golla) 2) Meso-America (Terrence Kaufman) 3) South America (Terrence Kaufman.) 4) Australasia & the Pacific (Darrell Tryon) 5) East and South East Asia (David Bradley) 6) Southern Asia (R.E.Asher) 7) Northern Asia & Eastern Europe (Bernard Comrie) 8) Western Europe (Lachlan Mackenzie) 9) Middle East & North Africa (A.K. Irvine) 10) Sub-Saharan Africa (Benji Wald)