Thrills of learning English

OXFORD SPELLING DICTIONARY: Maunce Waite - Editor; œ5.99.

OXFORD DICTIONARY OF IDIOMS: Jennifer Speake - Editor; œ7.99.

OXFORD DICTIONARY OF FOREIGN WORDS AND PHRASES: Jennifer Speake - Editor; Price not mentioned.

THE OXFORD REFERENCE GRAMMAR: Sidney Greenbaum, Edited by Edmund Weiner; œ9.99.

OXFORD BETTER WORDPOWER: Janet Whitcut; œ6.99. All pub. by Oxford University Press, 219, Oxford House, Anna Salai, Thousand Lights, Chennai- 600006.

GONE ARE the days when dictionaries and grammars came wearing a funereal cowl. Today our publishers are out to make these futsy volumes a pleasure to handle. When the green shirt on the cover sticks his tongue out while learning to spell right (kit/chen, by/cyc/list), we join the spellchek too with pleasure im/mense/ly, par/al/lelogram, tee/total/ler. Here is a good teacher who gives both British and American spellings for nearly a lakh and sixty thousand entries.

Piggy boy on the cover of the Dictionary of Idioms zooms in space piloting a toy aeroplane to enable us probe the roots of familiar expressions. Idioms play a terrible mischief in cultural translation and a proper understanding is essential. Jennifer Speake (what an appropriate name!) has done her job efficiently. ``Not in my back yard'', that goes around as the acronym NIMBY? ``Originating in the U.S. in derogatory references to the attitude of anti-nuclear campaigners. In Britain it is particularly associated with the reports of the then Environment Secretary, Nicholas Ridley's opposition in 1988 to housing developments near his own home.''

With an election round the corner, the Indian journalist would find Speake's collection a reliable assistant. When an important member of a party is ``conspicuous by his absence'' in a meeting, one leader ``holds another in contempt'' and ``leaves in the lurch'' an associate who will not ``take the insult lying down'', and many find themselves ``in a catch-22 situation'', then one will have to remain closeted with Speake for a while.

Like the English idioms, the foreign words and phrases that have entered the English language are a great temptation for the writer in English. After the giggly cover with a wedding in progress, it is a pleasant party hosted by Speake again as we taste nearly 8000 entries which have originated from languages like Afrikaans, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew and Latin. What is of particular interest to the audience is that we need no more scout around for translations of samosa and samskara, corah and fez, jalebi and moksha. At the same time what we may consider familiar may be an unfamiliar word. Email ombrandt? No, it has nothing to do with electronic mail. It is ``a form of decoration in which a coloured glaze is laid over intagliated earthenware or porcelain to give a monochrome picture.''

Grammar does not easily lend itself to a light-hearted approach and so the cover of Reference Grammar is staid with the promise of ``a readable and up-to-date guide to modern English grammar.'' Also valuable for our times when the English language has spread fast provoking a counter in promoting local languages like Swahili in Nigeria and Tamil in Tamil Nadu. How does one go about fixing a standard English when variations rule the day!

There are also other problems like the gender-safe approach. Sidney Greenbaum has done a magnificent job of actually making it painless to learn good grammar, and Edmund Weiner's editing makes it easy and pleasant for the probing eye. The not-so-familiar diction of grammar (restrictive appositives, non-assertive indefinites) gets explained very well with striking examples that makes this ready reckoner an important input for one's personal library.

Finally, Better Wordpower. The angler on the cover is busy catching a basketful of fish: ichthyo, balmy, acme, tucket. With our general vocabulary unable to comprehend the multifoliate riches of the English language, Janet Whitcut has taken up the job of helping us on how to comprehend ``confusable'' words and gives us ``two powerful ways of building one's own vocabulary.'' In effect, perusing the book itself becomes an unqualified pleasure. Ah, ichthyo is a fish, balmy is foolish, acme is the highest point and tucket is the fanfare on a trumpet. Learning English has indeed been made enjoyable by these ``trusted reference books''. Those who want to advance the cause of the Tamil language better, learn their lesson now.

PREMA NANDAKUMAR

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