As the preface accurately says, “This dictionary stands as the most thorough dictionary of Creole” (p. i). This statement is verifiable in the studious way in which the dictionary has been compiled: with a nomenclature of 30,000 headwords, 26,000 subentries, details of the meaning and sentence-length examples of 35,000 multi-word or idiomatic expressions, word microstructures, and a succinct semantic analysis that distinguishes between homonyms and polysemes. Coming at a time when there are no extensive monolingual dictionaries designed for native speakers of Haitian Creole, this dictionary is an authoritative and authentic compilation of Creole lexical resources – a first major step toward the “preparation of monolingual dictionaries with specifically targeted readerships to be used in Haiti” (i). This would be a laudable effort that will give Creole speakers better understanding of the linguistic (research-based) system of their language. This has up to now been in the hands of mostly foreign, non-native, and even non-Creole-speaking creolists and linguists.

A few words about Haitian Creole are not out of place here. It is one of five principal groups of French-based creoles, beside those of the Lesser Antilles, French Guyana, Louisiana, and the Mascarene Archipelago. It is referred to by its speakers simply as Kreyòl – a francicized form of Creole. It is, the editors say, “spoken by all Haitians, and it is the sole means of communication for the vast majority of the population” (iii). It functions together with French as official language of the Republic of Haiti. Losing out to French as the subordinate, less prestigious, non-literary, non-educational language, “Creole is [nevertheless] considered by all Haitians as the true national language of the country” (iii). French and Creole share many lexical items, but as in most situations of pidgin and creole evolution, many of these are false cognates. Although phonological features remain predominantly similar, there are substantial differences at the grammatical level, which render them “mutually unintelligible under most circumstances” (iii).

The preliminary pages provide relevant information about the status of Creole in Haiti, its orthography and sound system, its numbers system, a grammatical sketch, a user’s guide to the dictionary, and a detailed discussion of the content of entries. There is also a bibliography that lists works not only in linguistics but also in mathematics, literature, and journalism. The dictionary uses the IPN alphabet, designed in 1975 under the Institut Pédagogique National. This alphabet represents each distinctive sound (phoneme) with one symbol. The majority of phonological descriptions provided here are based on the speech of monolingual rather than bilingual speakers. The grammatical sketch gives illustrative explanations of Haitian Creole noun phrases (determiners, adjectives), personal pronouns, the expression of possession, the verb system (verb markers, verb marker combinations, aspectual and modal verbs, serial verbs, copula, imperative), negative sentences, interrogatives, comparative forms of adjectives, coordination and subordination, and the expression of emphasis.

Given that Haitian Creole is French-lexified, this bilingual dictionary is vital for English speakers learning it. The way in which it is compiled makes it an invaluable resource for both expert and non-expert readers, native and non-native Creole speakers, and students and teachers of creolistics and, in general, contact linguistics. The use of extensive sentence-length examples makes it stand out as a major linguistic treasure house for everyone interested in languages, whether for research purposes or simply for tourism.