Customer Reviews

Dictionary of Louisiana Creole

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This is by far the best dictionary of any of the French creoles I've seen to date. As such, it's a must-buy for people interested in Louisiana Creole or any of the other French Creoles, Cajun, general French dialects, or dialects of American English in general, and certainly in Southern US dialects or Black Vernacular English. (In fact, until someone puts this kind of work into a Haitian lexicon, the /Dictionary of Louisiana Creole/ might have to do if you need a nice big Haitian-English-Haitian lexicon.)

This lexicon uses a coherent phonemic orthography, has a wide base of sources, and has lots and lots of example sentences (something I always appreciate). The lexicon deals well with lexical variation, which is a problem area in any dictionary of Creole. The lexicon is well printed -- in organization of entries, choice of font faces and sizes, and in quality of reproduction. And, altho it's new and only time will tell, it seems well bound.

The notable parts of this edition are:

* An about 20 page grammar sketch of the language.

* About ten pages on using the dictionary, orthography, and bibliography.

* About 470 pages comprising the creole lexicon. Each entry here consists notably of the Creole headword (and alternate forms); translation into American English; translation into Modern French; and example sentences in Creole (each translated into American English, but not into French). Then if there are subentries, those are listed too, with their own translations and examples. There are abbreviations noting the source of the data.

* An English-to-Creole index. About 80 pages.

* A French-to-Creole index. About 80 pages.