Ever since the publication of Qidan xiaozi yanjiu (Research on the Kitan Small Script) in 1985, the slow, steady decipherment of Kitan has been the most outstanding contribution of Chinese scholars (both Mongol and Han) to Altaic linguistics and philology. Led by Chinggeltei (Ch. Qingge'rtai) and Chen Naixiong at Inner Mongolia University, and by Liu Fengzhu and Yu Baolin at the Academy of Social Science in Beijing, the Kitan Small Script Research Group has slowly identified phonetic values and meanings for the symbols in one of the scripts found on Kitan inscriptions, called the “small script.” These date from the Liao and Jin dynasties, with the earliest dating to 1055 and the latest to 1170. Some progress has also been made on identifying the meaning of the symbols in the other Kitan script, called the “large script,” although phonetic values are still unclear.
In The Kitan Language and Script, Daniel Kane has written a thorough and accessible guide to what is reliably known of the Kitan script. Kane's study does not, however, cover every aspect of the Kitan language. As he notes, he does not deal with, except tangentially, the transcriptions of Kitan words into Chinese characters found in Chinese sources. As this includes much important vocabulary not yet identified in Kitan script materials, his study is not a complete description of what is known about the Kitan language, only of the language insofar as it is known from the script.
Kane begins with a clear introduction to the Kitan historical context, the history of research on the topic, the process and methodology of decipherment, and the conventions of transcription. Chapter 2 lists of all of the known Kitan small script characters and what is known of their sound (when used as phonograms) and meaning (when used as logographs). Chapter 3 gives an English–Kitan glossary. Chapter 4 gives all of the morphemes and other grammatical features known from the Kitan inscriptions. Chapter 5 offers a brief introduction and glossary of the Kitan large script. Chapter 6 gives three important texts with phonetic readings, notes on translation, and Chinese parallels. Chapter 7 analyzes the phonology of Liao Chinese insofar as it relates to the decipherment of the Kitan script.
The list-based organization, while probably the best possible one given the state of knowledge, has its drawbacks. Much important information appears outside its proper headword. For example, the English–Kitan glossary has go.er for “house, household” (entry 3.100, p. 102). But no mention is made in that entry that go.er is likely related to the go.t “family,” which appears elsewhere under “good, goodness” (entry 3.086, p. 100) in an illustrative sentence. Go.t is also found in the notes to the transliterated texts (see p. 192 n.18, 206 n. 44), where Kane adds the important information that it is probably a plural form. An additional cognate found in the notes to these texts is go.ci, perhaps “houses, buildings” (p. 188 n. 9). In short, there is often much more data relevant to particular words than one finds set out explicitly in the entries in chapter 3.
Kane's approach is rigorously skeptical: skeptical about particular hypotheses advanced about the phonetic or semantic values of particular characters, skeptical that the Kitan language belongs to the Mongolic family, and skeptical of how much is really known of Kitan even now. At points this skepticism leaves, I believe, a false impression. Kitan is, from the data Kane presents, quite clearly of the Mongolic family, even though it just as clearly diverges sharply from the attested Mongolian of the thirteenth century on. Kane is right that other scholars have too mechanically attached Mongolian phonetic values to Kitan words, but the genetic relationship between the two seems undeniable. Kane often leaves unmentioned quite plausible connections with Mongolian. In the case of go 
er go 
t, for example, a link to Mongolian ger, “tent,” “family,” seems quite in order. Nor should the progress already made be underestimated. Enough is known of Kitan to be of considerable significance not just for linguistics, but also for historians. For example, the fact that the name Xiao, designating the Kitan Liao's imperial consort clan in Chinese sources, is not found in any Kitan text and appears to be an outsider's designation for what in Kitan was a number of separate clans (see p. 5) is a major datum for social history.
Still, in a survey of this nature excessive skepticism is a far more tolerable vice than excessive credulity. Altaicists, Chinese linguists, students of Liao and Inner Asian history, and, of course, specialists on Kitan will all profit greatly from this lucid summary of the results of the last thirty years in Kitan decipherment. They will use the work all the more confidently knowing that only the most reliable results have been included and that further speculations have been left to them, the grateful readers.
