Conversations on Dictionaries

The Universe in a Book

Ilan Stavans (Amherst College, Massachusetts)

$238.95 $190.78

Hardback

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English

Cambridge University Press
16 October 2025

Historical & comparative linguistics; Lexicography

How did dictionaries come to be? When and how did they originate in a specific language? Who was involved in that origin story? How have they evolved over time? What is the tension between scholarly and commercial, and between prescriptive and descriptive, dictionaries? What is the politics behind each dictionary? And what is the connection between dictionaries and nation-building? This fascinating book has the answers. It brings together a collection of conversations with leading lexicographers from around the world to explore the role dictionaries have played in history, comparing the parallel histories of lexicography in twenty different languages. The conversations explore the way dictionaries, which preserve language while contributing to their standardization, are always political in nature, prescribing some words while cancelling others. Covering major world languages, indigenous languages, and hybrid languages, this is essential reading for academic researchers and students of lexicography, and professional and trainee professional lexicographers.

Edited by: Ilan Stavans (Amherst College Massachusetts)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Weight: 633g
ISBN: 9781009392419
ISBN 10: 1009392417
Pages: 322
Publication Date: 16 October 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction: the universe in a book; 1. Ancient Greek William A. Ross; 2. Esperanto Esther Schor; 3. German Volker Harm; 4. Chinese Haoran Tong; 5. Hybrid languages Ilan Stavans and Margaret E. Boyle; 6. English Peter Gilliver; 7. French Marie-Hélène Drivaud and Peter Sokolowski; 8. Italian Carla Marello and Claudio Marazzini; 9. Arabic Hassan Hamzé; 10. Hebrew Ruvik Rosenthal; 11. Indigenous languages Mark Turin; 12. Irish Seán Ua Súilleabháin; 13. African languages Dion Nkomo and Paul Achille Mavoungou; 14. Nahuatl John Sullivan; 15. Yiddish Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath; 16. Portuguese Rute Costa and Ana Salgado; 17. Japanese Yukio Tono; 18. Russian Mikhail Kopotev; 19. Quechua Odi Gonzales; 20. Scandinavian Lars Trap-Jensen; 21. Spanish Francisco Javier Pérez; Epilogue: the total dictionary.

Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, the publisher of Restless Books, and an advisor to the Oxford English Dictionary. His recent publications include How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish (2020), and The People's Tongue (2023).