January 1997 newsletter

In this issue of OED News we have an interesting account from Professor Richard Allsopp of the background to his recently published Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage, which highlights the difficulties of data collection and organization faced by all lexicographers.

We also have a contribution from Stuart Silverstein, a writer and attorney who lives in Los Angeles, and is editor of Not Much Fun: the Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker (New York: Scribner, 1996). Mr Silverstein is a regular contributor to the OED, and has found hundreds antedatings in the works of Parker and her circle.

We would also like to acknowledge valuable help from Japanese scholars:

Professor Hideo Hirooka of Osaka has generously provided the project with copies of his books Dialects in English Literature and Thomas Hardy's Use of Dialect, as well as several articles by himself and Masako Hirooka.

Dr Tetsuji Oda of University College, London, has informed us about Asterisk, a monthly journal of historical English studies published by the English Philological Society of Japan, and about his Web pages on etymology.

Mr Takakumi Tanno of Kitaibaraki City has kindly obtained photocopies of a number of articles not easily available in Britain.

Mr Nicholas Warren, of Fukuoka Women's Junior College, who is co-author with Professor Garland Cannon of The Japanese Contribution to the English Language (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz), is acting as the OED's consultant on Japanese loanwords in English, as well as providing significant etymological assistance on a continuing basis.