{"id":2167,"date":"2012-06-29T10:00:38","date_gmt":"2012-06-29T08:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=2167"},"modified":"2012-06-26T09:40:52","modified_gmt":"2012-06-26T07:40:52","slug":"ma%ca%b9di-english-english-ma%ca%b9di-dictionary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=2167","title":{"rendered":"M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed English\u2013English M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed dictionary"},"content":{"rendered":"
M\u00e0<\/strong>\u02b9<\/strong>d\u00ed English\u2013English M\u00e0<\/strong>\u02b9<\/strong>d\u00ed dictionary<\/strong>, 2nd edn. By Mairi J. Blackings<\/strong>. (Languages of the world\/dictionaries 25.) Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2011. Pp. vii, 232. ISBN 9783862880539<\/a>. $90.97.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Michael Cahill<\/a><\/strong>, SIL International<\/em><\/p>\n

This dictionary of about 7000 M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed entries is written by a M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00edspeaker\/linguist. The second edition has added 2000 entries since the first edition in 2000. It includes a six-page introduction explaining how to use the dictionary, including a list of phonemes and two notes on prefixes, but no other grammatical notes. The M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed entries are in bold type, followed by a more phonetic-looking entry in square brackets. The first, bolded, entry is in the old orthography, and the second entry is in the new orthography, which includes tone marks and distinguishes +\/- advanced tongue root (ATR) vowels with dots under [-ATR] vowels. Implosives are marked by an apostrophe before b<\/em>, d<\/em>, j,<\/em> and gb<\/em>, which varies between left- or right-hand single quote marks and an acute accent-like symbol, as in the volume\u2019s title above. The entry includes the part of speech, one or more brief English definitions, and sometimes an example sentence or phrase, alternative forms, dialect label, or source of a borrowed word. The presence vs. lack of examples makes the book appear to be a mix of glossary and full dictionary. An English-M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed glossary is included, with the English term, part of speech, and M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed equivalent in the new orthography. For convenience, I refer below to M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed entries in the old orthography.<\/p>\n

There are many examples of identically spelled adjacent entries, like eku<\/em> and eku<\/em> (also identical in the new orthography) defined as \u2018fish species\u2019 and \u2018glory\u2019, edi<\/em> and edi<\/em>, \u2018to have washed clothes\u2019 and \u2018to shout for help\u2019, te<\/em> and te<\/em>, \u2018to be drunk\u2019 and \u2018to fart\u2019, and eco<\/em> and eco<\/em>, \u2018to assume a different form\u2019 and \u2018to change\u2019. Examples such as the last are obviously related and perhaps could be combined under one main entry, but the others do not seem related. If these are not mistakes, then either M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed has quite a large number of homonyms, or there are phonetic distinctions not captured in the new orthography.<\/p>\n

There is not a one-to-one correlation between the M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed-English and English-M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed sections. The head entry for \u2018cook\u2019 (noun) is oddly listed with the plural form la\u2019di\u2019ba<\/em>, with the singular la\u2019dire<\/em> as a sub-entry. If one looks at the English-M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed glossary, we find la\u2019dire<\/em> as well as another entry late\u2019do<\/em>, which does not appear in the main M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed-English section at all. Those wanting to know the difference between la\u2019dire<\/em> and late\u2019do<\/em> will therefore be disappointed. One finds \u2018rot\u2019 and \u2018decay\u2019 both have ngma<\/em> as the M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed gloss, but when one looks up ngma<\/em> in the M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00edsection, we find only \u2018decay\u2019.<\/p>\n

Likewise, there are many M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed terms for plant and animal names where it would be helpful to have species names, such as with ngulinguli<\/em>, which is simply defined as \u2018a herb\u2019, and rota <\/em>\u2018plant species\u2019, without any other details. (Recall also eku<\/em> was simply \u2018a species of fish\u2019.) Line drawings or some other illustrations would be helpful to identify terms more specifically.<\/p>\n

Despite the unevenness of entries, this is a valuable and informative book for researchers. One could wish for a price affordable for the M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed people themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed English\u2013English M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed dictionary, 2nd edn. By Mairi J. Blackings. (Languages of the world\/dictionaries 25.) Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2011. Pp. vii, 232. ISBN 9783862880539. $90.97. Reviewed by Michael Cahill, SIL International This dictionary of about 7000 M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00ed entries is written by a M\u00e0\u02b9d\u00edspeaker\/linguist. The second edition has added 2000 entries since the first edition in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2168,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167\/revisions\/2168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}