Customer Reviews

Hopi Dictionary/Hopiikwa Lavaytutuveni: A Hopi-English Dictionary of the Third Mesa Dialect

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Let's face it, dictionary-making is one of the most difficult linguistic tasks when working with any language. The decisions are complex and often require detailed analysis far beyond the skills of a single linguist. This dictionary is a true team effort and has been decades in the making. Much of the team membership are native speakers of Hopi as well.

This dictionary is a truly outstanding effort and deserves a place in every library of languages and linguistics, whether the library is focused on the languages of Native America or not. There are only a couple dozen dictionaries in the world that clearly exceed the exhaustiveness and production quality of this volume. This dictionary of Hopi is the very best dictonary to have been produced for ANY language of Native America. It is superior to dictionaries of the majority of minority languages of Europe as well.

As far as size and production quality, it exceeds most "college-level" dictionaries of English, although not quite as large as the "unabridged" dictionaries of English.

With the imminent extinction of many of the languages of the Americas, this dictionary is unlikely to be superseded as the dictionary we all wish we could make.

Extremely thorough, comprehensive dictionary of the Third Mesa dialect includes *30,000* entries, each with multiple word forms and at least one sample sentence. Cultural context, idioms, and colloquialisms are also indicated. There are illustrations for entries that need them, just as there are in the better English dictionaries. Includes a pronunciation guide, brief grammar and a separate index of prefixes and suffixes.

I am in the process of learning the Hopi language, and this seems to be the only dictionary available. This book has been extremely useful. My only complaint is the ridiculous price. Why are books on rare languages so expensive? Don't we want anyone to learn them?