The Uralic Langauges (Routledge Language Family Series)

Routledge has a great line of language family books, which are very well written, but which are intended more for advanced learners/linguists and specialists looking for those minor (but never trivial) details on a language. This book is very well written and I am happy that such a publication exists because there isn't much available on the lesser known Uralic languages. My intention was to gain a better perspective on Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, and I was well pleased. Anyone looking into a more TECHNICAL side of these languages will be pleased. As an added note, do also look into Cambridge's material.

For linguists interested in Uralic languages, this is an outstanding reference with essays written mostly by top scholars in the field--Pekka Sammallahti for Saami might be singled out in particular. Unfortunately, Routledge has priced the book staggeringly high. No scholar with just a casual interest in the field and without very deep pockets could afford it. Consult it in the library--if you can get your library to buy it. The only flaw I find with _The Uralic Languages_ is the lack of a chart setting out the traditional Uralicists' phonetic transcription system. Knowledge of this system is indispensable for reading older Uralic scholarship, and a survey like this would have been a good place to include it.