With 30,000 headwords, this is the most extensive dictionary of any French-lexifier Creole published so far. It is one of the results of years of work by teams at the University of Indiana at Bloomington, under the direction of Albert Valdman (see JFLS 10:1, 174–176 for a review of an earlier dictionary from the same stable.) Its stated primary purpose is ‘to assist English speakers to interpret Haitian Creole . . . written texts’ but it is also intended to help learners of the Creole [HC] to extend their vocabulary and speakers of HC ‘to improve their oral and written skills in English’ (p. i). It is hence essentially utilitarian in aim and does not attempt to trace etymologies or relations with other languages.

A short introductory section (pp. i–xxxiv) includes general remarks on Creole, notes on the orthography and sound system of HC, an outline of basic features of its grammar and a clear user's guide, as well as a brief bibliography (of printed works only – there are no references to the growing number of relevant websites). The dictionary proper, which fills the remaining 781 tightly packed pages, is clearly set out and easy to read.

The spelling used is what since 1979 has been the nearest thing to a standard orthography for HC. Largely phonemic, using some of the conventions of French (e.g. ou for [u] and n after a vowel to indicate nasalisation), it is explained in terms understandable to a monolingual North American speaker of English (the o in pot is given as an English equivalent of [a]), but there is no guidance on the pronunciation of phonemes unknown in English, such as the semi-vowel transcribed as u or the value of oun (a rare example of a nasalised [u]) in oungan ‘voodoo priest’. Phonetic variants are listed separately, with cross references to the full main entry, which is based on the usage of monolingual urban speakers.

Headwords are given in alphabetical order. They are followed by an indication of the part of speech, a gloss in idiomatic American English, and, where necessary, one or more illustrative examples with an English translation. The example sentences are for the most part made up by the editorial team. Sub-entries include phrases, idiomatic expressions and proverbs containing the headword. Cross references to synonyms allow the reader to get a glimpse of semantic families, though this is not done systematically: e.g. milat ‘mulatto’ or ti madanm ‘male homosexual’ do not refer to any of the quasi-synonyms found elsewhere; there is nothing to indicate that there are any local terms for HIV/AIDS other than sida; and occasionally cross references lead to a dead end.

Overall coverage is impressive. The user gains the picture of a language capable of dealing with all aspects of life in the twenty-first century, including computers, football, maths lessons and abstract ideas, as well as more traditional facets of Haitian life such as carnival, children's games and voodoo. While new notions are sometimes expressed by the creative use of traditional HC lexical items – e.g. makè ‘computer mouse’ or fè mi ‘to protect the goal from the opposite team during a direct foul shot’ – there has also been a massive transfer of French terms adapted to HC phonology (e.g. òdinatè, mikwofòn): just as Middle French borrowed from Latin, the Creole, which shares with French the role of official language in Haiti and is spoken by all Haitians (in Haiti and in the diaspora) has had recourse to its lexifier in order to function as a living, modern language. Purists will no doubt object to the inclusion of such items in the HCEBD, claiming that they are not ‘real’ Creole. However, given the prime target readership of anglophones wanting to understand HC, there is no reason why they should not figure here.

Occasionally one might have wished for more precise information. This is especially true of botanical and zoological terminology: the editors disclaim any encyclopaedic function for the work, but to be told that ti nèg wuj ak jòn is a ‘kind of fish’ or matenten a ‘kind of edible plant’ is not very helpful.

I came across very few typographical errors, and even fewer cases where I questioned the information given (examples are pat fig, glossed as ‘bunch of bananas’, rather than ‘hand’, a bunch being a collection of hands on a stem (see Faine, Reference Faine1974: 335), or the absence of the sense ‘(month of) March’ (ibid. 292) under mas).

Such quibbles apart, the publication of the HCEBD, with its wide coverage of the lexical resources available to speakers of HC, is a major milestone in Creole lexicography.