Andrew Dalby is a historian and linguist. Languages in his repertoire include Sanskrit, Pali, French, Latin, Greek, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, German, and Burmese. He is the author of several books, including The Classical Cookbook (1996), Dangerous Tastes: the Story of Spices (2000), Language in Danger: The Loss of Linguistic Diversity and the Threat to Our Future (2003) and Bacchus: A Biography (2003). He studied classics and linguistics at St John's College, Cambridge, and gained a PhD from London University.

Covering the political, social and historical background of each language, Dictionary of Languages offers a unique insight into human culture and communication. Every language with official status is included, as well as all those that have a written literature and 175 'minor' languages with special historical or anthropological interest. We see how, with the rapidly increasing uniformity of our culture as media's influence spreads, more languages have become extinct or are under threat of extinction. The text is highlighted by maps and charts of scripts, while proverbs, anecdotes and quotations reveal the features that make a language unique.