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The Globe and Mail recently enlisted 30 Canadian authors, editors, awards-givers to pick their best books of 2010. Contributor André Alexis, whose novel Childhood won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, picked Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad and Tobago as his 2010 (and perhaps the decade's) favourite:
My Book of the Year is, without doubt, Lise Winer's Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad and Tobago (McGill-Queen’s). It may be my book of the decade, as well. I was born in Trinidad, a country on which a number of European (English, French, Spanish), Asian (Indian, Chinese), African and regional cultures had profound linguistic influences. The Trinidadian language, in principle English, is a beautiful farrago of foreign words, phrases and sounds, and it's one of the most riotously amusing instruments I know of. Winer's dictionary – a must for inhabitants as well as expatriates – brings some order to the chaos, but it does so in the best way: You have to explore to discover the riches. I've spent lovely hours learning some of its words for “idiot” (Ghachoo, kunumunu, kunkun) or for the names of its birds (cobo, corail) or for things with no equivalent in Canadian English (for instance, ghungutanay – a verb meaning to cover one's head out of respect:. Some of the words and expressions scrupulously recorded here are no longer current but for me, a man who vividly remembers the “trini” language the adults spoke when he was a child, this book is like a restoration of my childhood and of my parents. I am immensely grateful for its existence.
Read the full article here.
Or order a copy of Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad and Tobago
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