Las lenguas de las Américas - the Languages of the Americas

Book excerpt: Las lenguas de las Américas - the Languages of the Americas takes the reader on a journey through twenty chapters addressing the languages of the Americas all the way from Canada and the USA to Argentina and Brazil. The authors are international experts who have written mainly in Spanish and English, but in a few cases also in French, Portuguese and German. The book deals with the languages of the descendants of the first Americans; it gives an insight into the American varieties of English, French, Portuguese and Spanish; it explores the outcome of the long-lasting coexistence of various autochthonous and European languages; it also looks into some very specific hybrid forms of locally or regionally unique varieties in the Americas, focusing on creolization, code-switching and translanguaging resulting from language contact. The languages and linguistic varieties dealt with in this book are numerous and so are the approaches and methods applied; most are mainly synchronic, but some are also diachronic. All in all, the book has managed to draw a succinct and representative portrait of the multifaceted linguistic landscapes of the Americas.