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Johnson
Johnson on Caribbean English
Jun 27th 1996
From The Economist print edition
BOW down and give thanks and praise, as Samuel Johnson surely would have, for this stupendous work*—not least, as its editor, Richard Allsopp, does to the many, from the Almighty down, whose encouragement kept him going for more than 20 years at what at times seemed to him, he admits, and, more dangerously, to the University of the West Indies, like a labour that would never be completed.
There have been glossaries of sundry Caribbean Creoles before now, and scholarly dictionaries—though these only within the past 30 years—from Jamaica and the Bahamas. But this is the first pan-Caribbean dictionary of English; which of course means usage as well as sense, and which shades indistinguishably into Creole, incorporating terms and constructions from several European languages and many African ones. Whatever faults may be found in it, or whatever may succeed it, this is and will remain a landmark for the Caribbean much as Johnson's dictionary was in England.
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