American English

Press, 28 March 1981, Page 17

American English

Funk and * Wagnails Standard Dictionary. Signet, New American Library, 1980. 1013 pp. $3.95 (paperback). J Readers interested in the modern I dialects of English, and in search of a ? reliable guide to the state of American ■ usage, spelling and punctuation, will find this a most useful book. Readers in search of a dictionary for use in New Zealand would be wise to keep clear. Funk and Wagnails dictionaries enjoy a status in the : United States not far short of that of the I Oxford dictionaries in Britain, but the i differences of American and British 1 usages are such that the more accurate an j American dictionary is for Americans, the [ less useful it is as a guide elsewhere. $ This “Standard Dictionary” claims to 'i have 82,000 entries. In scope it falls somewhere between the “Pocket Oxford” . and the “Concise Oxford,” even though the “Concise” claims only 74,000 items. The Oxford dictionaries are richer in defining derivatives (such as “cry blue murder” > from “murder”). Funk and Wagnails is j stronger in including particularlv I American ' words,' such as “burnsides,” | meaning sideburns of hair, and taken from t the name of an American Civil War ? general.

The American dictionary is misleading • in its American spellings if it is to be used i by a New Zealander. It is misleading, too, t in the pronunciation it gives for such [F words as “tomato” and "primarily.” A ? short section on grammar and punctuation ' at the end of the dictionary is generally ; helpful, but in the dictionary itself there is a tendency to abandon hyphens where English (or New Zealand) usage would put them in. The result is such oddities as ■ “nonoily,” “nonerotic.” “nonnaval,” and |“antinoise.” P* A useful aspect of the American dictionary is the inclusion of what it calls “collateral adjectives” — adjectives not obviously formed from the appropriate noun — in the section' explaining the particular noun. Thus “canine” appears in the “dog” entry, and "thermal” in the “heat” entry. A pronouncing gazetteer is also useful for those'uncertain about how to pronounce Tashkent, or Kuala Lumpur, or Auckland (but there is no help for Christchurch). According'to. this section the first syllables of Auckland and Australia have the same pronunciation. ■ English speakers bn both sides of the Tasman Sea might not agree.—Literary Editor.