Kenneth Katzner (1930–2003)

Katzner's dictionary is often touted as the best reference available for the intermediate to advanced American student of Russian as a foreign language. I would guess that this stems first from the fact that more common American word-stock is found in the dictionary, and secondly that the alternative, The Oxford Russian Dictionary used to come in two heavy volumes each with a hefty price-tag.

However, I do not agree. The entries in this dictionary are often incomplete and do not reflect show more contemporary usage. There is only minimal morphological information provided which is very helpful to the type of student that surely forms the basis of the market of this dictionary. I think it is worth spending the extra money to buy one of the updated single volume editions of the Oxford given that it provides relatively complete phraseology and morphology for every entry and reflects a broad variety of English dialects. show less

This book was good as far as it went. It provides a fascinating overview of some of the world's languages and how they relate to one another, as well as samples to show how they look. For language geek like myself, it's a good to just sit and flip through!

A nice book as a quick guide of all the modern languages of the world - I especially liked that it included the standard scripts used for writing each language, as well as a passage written in that language with a handy English translation with which to compare the two. As mentioned in the previous review, however, each essay was rather short and left little room for anything more than a cursory analysis. This particular edition (1995) is also quite out of date, and thus if you're looking show more for up-to-date, accurate information on where many of these languages stand, there are better books out there. Still, for those who want an easy lead into the subject, this is well worth giving a go. show less

A series of very short essays on language groups, followed by one-page snapshots of 200 languages. That doesn't leave much room for analysis: the individual language write ups have a paragraph in the language (in the appropriate script), a translation of the paragraph, and a one or two paragraph sketch of who speaks the language, what is its history, and how it is related to other languages. Not much, but fun for the enthusiast.