Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference to More Than 400 Languages (review)

??? COHPAnATIST and the composer are identified with an "ewige Geisterstadt, city ofspirits or spiritual cities [. . .] the common homeland of all arts, a land in which all kinds of artists communicate through a universal metaphoric language" (61). This "city" suggests the idea ofa community to which we could add the figures oftheflâneur and the bohemian. The author's research centers on concepts ofperformance, interpretation, language , and music. By analyzing several concepts ofmusic, verbal art, and composition , she discusses the complex relation between sounds and words, as well as the Saussurean interaction ofsignifiers and signifieds, langue and parole. The abundant corpus ofthinkers to which she refers belongs to the French and German schools (Benveniste, Foucault, Barthes, Benjamin) and includes some ofthe most prestigious scholars who developed their research in France (Saussure, Ruwet). Bernstein also provides a solid basis for an ongoing discussion of the relationship among musicians (Liszt, Chopin) and writers ofthe Romantic century (Heine, Baudelaire). At the same time the author discusses the predominant styles ofthe period and encourages us to re-evaluate the function ofthe arabesques (and other forms ofdigression ) that inaugurate a figurative space (32), and to redefine the characteristics ofwhat might be called a "personal style." While analyzing Liszt and discussing the concept oíotherness, Bernstein reveals her doubts about her task: "What I present, therefore, cannot be 'knowledge.' It cannot be knowledge, because there is nothing to ground these similarities, no essence or substratum ofLiszt" (1 14). Thus, the author projects herselfas a voice that questions her status as a traditional reader. In her book, Susan Bernstein confirms the importance ofthe dialogue between tradition and interdisciplinary studies. She also prepares the way for a better understanding of the societies (and artists) influenced by France and Germany in the nineteenth century, such as those in Latin America (Bello, Heredia, Echeverría, Gertrudis de Avellaneda, Mera, Montalvo, et al.), who reproduced in a very contradictory way many ofthe hallmarks ofthe European civilization. Fernando IturburuState University ofNew York-Plattsburgh ANDREW DALBY. Dictionary ofLanguages: The Definitive Reference to More Than 400 Languages. New York: Columbia UP, 1999. xvi + 734 pp. How does one review a dictionary, I wondered, never having attempted the task before. The problem commences already with the word dictionary itself, primarily because ceci n'est pas un dictionnaire. Rather, this reference work constitutes a surprising hybrid ofdictionary, encyclopedia, and geo-linguistic guide. On the one hand it provides a wealth oflinguistic information, but equally important, it invites us to consider the implicit questions raised by a dictionary oflanguages, or by any dictionary for that matter. The questions arise immediately due to the author's selection of only four hundred "major languages ofthe 20th century" (vii) out ofa potential pool ofover five thousand (spoken in 1997). Dalby's criteria could, I imagine , provide for hours ofheated debate: "These are the languages that the 20th century needs to know aboutfirst: national languages of independent countries, languages ofimportant minorities that will make news, classical languages ofthe past" (vii). But he also uses a statistical rationale, including in the book, for the most part, only languages spoken by more than a million people. But this "statistic" Vol·. 24 (2000): 185 BOOK NOTES is, in itself, at issue because ofthe potential unreliability ofcensuses or other measuring devices used to determine numbers ofspeakers. Dalby raises most of the potential conundrums himself in the introduction, which provides an overview oflinguistic fields and issues such as proto-languages, tracing language history, names oflanguages, and in an interesting section, "Facts, real facts and statistics," concerning the difficulties ofdetermining how many people really speak a given language. As we leam, almost every aspect oflanguage is political. Even seemingly innocuous statistics like the number of speakers are fraught with sociopolitical implications. Emotive issues such as nationalism or minority status might affect those who self-identify as speakers of a particular language. Even names oflanguages, upon which literary scholars probably rarely reflect, can also be politically charged: "Until the 1940s," Dalby tells us, "the lingua franca ofthe southeast Asian archipelago was called 'Malay' by nearly everybody. For newly independent Indonesia the term had been found unsuitable because of its connection with Malaya, still British-ruled. So the form ofMalay...