The Bantam New College Spanish & English Dictionary (review)

Reviews293 Business Words and Phrases. New York: Stein. Oran, Daniel. 1983. The MBA's Dictionary. Reston, VA: Reston. Walmsley, Julian. 1985. Dictionary of International Finance. New York: Wiley. Richard A. Spears Northwestern University The Bantam New College Spanish & English Dictionary. Edwin B. Williams. New York: Bantam, 1968. Five of the six other dictionaries in the Bantam series have been reviewed or noticed in Dictionaries 6, 7, Lexicographica 2, and Jewish Language Review 2, 5, and 6. A seventh dictionary (Hebrew and English) was added to the series, although it was not edited by the series editor, Edwin B. Williams. All of these dictionaries contain material not found in others (even larger ones). They can be improved in several ways. [1] Spelling In 1959, the Spanish Language Academy of Spain, in cooperation with Spanish language academies in other Spanish-speaking countries, modified Spanish orthography in several minor ways. For some inexplicable reason, Williams adopted these changes only partly and haphazardly. For example, di'&na dio became di and dio in 1959, but he used di and dio (347); fui and fué became fui and fue, but he used fué (327), though the new spellings are found on pp. 342 and 352. Other spelling changes are incorporated not at all or only partly in this dictionary. English tends to use fewer diacritics today than years ago. Even in 1968, reëdit, reelection, reënlist, reentry, reexamination, cooperate, cooperation, cooperative, and 294Reviews coordinate were obsolete (at least in American English), but these are the only spellings in this dictionary, which compromises at just one entry: it has both rôle and role (though it prefers the former, which is found in the subentry on p. 276 and is the only form given at papel on p. 256). When a German noun is borrowed by English, most people write it with a small letter, yet Williams wrote Putsch (260). All of these overly conservative spellings should be eliminated. [2] Base Forms The base form of Spanish and English nouns is the singular, but if the singular does not occur, the noun should be listed in the plural. Sometimes, however, occurrence is a matter of degree rather than an open-and-shut case; for example, handcuffand chopstick, though they occur, are far less frequent (with respect to their plurals) than are book, pen, table, or door (with respect to their plurals). Here are the entries which I would have listed in the singular: senior citizens, chopsticks, closing prices, vested interests, nursery rhymes, nursery tales, competitive prices, missing persons, wonder drugs, sulpha drugs, Siamese twins; esposas and hermanos siameses. Where the singular is not common, the lexicographer may prefer to list the plural, but in the present case the singulars are not rare, hence they should have been the base forms. [3] The Definite Article If the definiendum or the definiens is a noun phrase and is always used with the definite article, the article should be shown. This is done, for example, in Last Supper, the 'la Cena', Islam 'el Islam', Indonesia 'la Indonesia', and Soviet Russia 'la Rusia Soviética', but not in many other entries (e.g., Near East, Nile, Blue Nile, Rhine, Salvation Army, Panama Canal, Panama Canal Zone, Holy See, and Great War). Reviews295 [4] Interjections Interjections should be followed by an exclamation point (in Spanish they are also preceded by an inverted one), which saves space by obviating the need for a part-of-speech label. This dictionary uses exclamation points in both the definiendum and the definiens at many entries (e.g., man alive!, look out!, mum 's the word!, so long!, and by jingo!), but not at others (like man overboard, cheerio, kerchoo; and exacto). [5] Reversing Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of entries have not been reversed in this dictionary. For example, Eng. canonry is glossed by 'canonjía', but at canonjía we find only 'sinecure', and at sinecure we find only 'sinecura' (which is reversed: sinecura 'sinecure'). Busby is glossed by 'morrión de húsar, colbac', but neither morrión de húsar nor colbac appears in the Spanish-English section. [6] Multiword Lexemes Multiword lexemes are at times listed haphazardly. Obra en mi poder appears twice (at...