9401: Re: 9398: dictionary (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: "Carrol F. Coates" <ccoates@mail.binghamton.edu>
 Casey, I'll risk sending this to the list since there may be some
other people who don't know of the availability of dictionaries.

Unfortunately, there is no dictionary (to my knowledge) that has as
extensive coverage in English to Kreyol as the Freeman/Laguerre for Kreyol
(Haitian) to English.  Fequiere Vilsaint published a small DIKSYONE
ANGLE/KREYOL//ENGLISH KREYOL DICTIONARY in 1991 (he may well have revised
and pub. new editions).  Albert Valdman's English-Kreyol dict. was
published recently (3-4 years ago?) by the University of Indiana Press and
is probably still available (I can't find my copy this instant to give an
exact ref.).  It is a beautiful job of lexicography and production, but not
very useful, to my mind, because it had such a limited number of entries
(Valdman told me he excluded plants and animals [and I don't know what
else] because he didn't think they would be very useful for the non-Haitian
writing Kreyol!!!)  Valdman's original mimeographed dictionary in two
volumes was possibly more extensive, but it was reproduced on poor paper
that was ready to crumble so I did not pay the high price.

This won't help presently, but B. Freeman told me he is working on a
companion "English-Haitian" volume.