Iraqw-English Dictionary (review)

This is the most complete dictionary of Iraqw, a major Southern Cushitic language, spoken by over half a million people in Tanzania. The work consists of a ‘Preface’ (vii), ‘Abbreviations and symbols’ (viii), ‘Introduction’ (1–8), ‘Iraqw-English dictionary’ (9–122), ‘English index’ (123–58), ‘Structure of the thesaurus’ (159–62), and ‘Thesaurus index’ (163–203). The preface explains the origins of the dictionary in an accumulation of Iraqw word compilations beginning with Paul Berger’s studies in the 1930s and culminating in the authors’ further compilations of other studies and their own fieldwork. The introduction notes that while Iraqw is subject to continual lexical change, particularly under the influence of the national language Swahili, the dictionary retains for their historical value words that are now archaic. Notations such as ‘archaic’, ‘poetic’, ‘taboo’, and so on mark entries where appropriate. The dictionary also attempts to identify loan words, but notes that many words that may have been borrowed from Datoga, a neighboring South Cushitic language, are not identified because Datoga remains relatively unresearched.

The introduction contains many other important notes, for example, that the orthography is not always phonemic, although it is used as a basis for alphabetization of words. For example, the grapheme combination 〈sl〉 represents the monosegmental voiced lateral fricative phoneme, but is alphabetized between 〈sk〉 and 〈sm〉. As common among Afro-Asiatic languages, plural nouns are not entirely predictable from singulars and are therefore given alongside the singulars in entries. Among the more common words, sample sentences are included in dictionary entries. The introduction ends with a useful list of references (6–8), including unpublished sources of information on Iraqw.

The Iraqw-English dictionary forms the bulk of book. I did not find the number of entries listed anywhere, but from a count of several pages I estimate a total of about 6,500. Word lists are given in two columns per page. ‘English index’ is a relatively short chapter, giving single-word Iraqw equivalents to alphabetized English words. It is rudimentary and probably intended as an elementary convenience for comparative Cushitic and Afro-Asiatic studies. The thesaurus consists of collections of Iraqw words organized according to semantic fields, rather than alphabetically. ‘Structure of the thesaurus’ is a table of contents of the following ‘Thesaurus index’, which lists the semantic fields into which words are organized in the index (e.g. 1. The human body (163–68), subcategorized, e.g. 1.9. Body positions and body activities (166–68), further subcategorized, e.g. 1.9.3. Movement: walk, climb, run (167)). The entries in the thesaurus index are stripped down from the Iraqw-English dictionary section, retaining the English definitions or equivalents, but shedding all other information. The preface explains that the thesaurus index is presented as a convenience for comparative linguists (6), probably meaning for comparative Cushitic.

In sum, the work is important both because it represents the culmination of Iraqw lexical collections to date, and because its entries are a model for the kind of information that should be contained in dictionaries of any language, with respect to formal irregularities (unpredictable Cushitic plurals), part of speech, definition/description, exemplification of use, register identification, and etymology.