Book review: ‘The Dictionary of Difficult Words’ by Jane Solomon and Louise Lockhart

Early English dictionaries, such as A Table Alphabeticall (1604), did not aim to be thorough. Instead they defined only difficult and specialised vocabulary – the assumption being that ordinary, familiar words did not need explaining. There are practical benefits to learning difficult words, and they often have aesthetic and intellectual appeal too, whether they are ‘lost’ words or simply outside the everyday trade of language.

Children in particular can be delighted by weird and wonderful words. And children in particular will lap up The Dictionary of Difficult Words, a new book written by lexicographer Jane Solomon and illustrated by Louise Lockhart. It’s aimed principally at readers aged 7–12, but this is a publication that will brighten anyone’s bookshelf. It would be very much at home in school libraries too.

Before opening the book, I was struck by how attractive it is as an object. The large, slim hardback has an embossed title and beautiful texture on the cover. The design throughout is fun and expressive, with multiple drawings or collages on every page. The whole package is artfully coloured and styled, with lexical and graphic marvels galore.

Some definitions are pithy:

An Esperanto Saga

At the turn of the year I decided, finally, to start using Duolingo to learn another language. I considered brushing up on Irish, French, or German – chronic rustiness has set in for all three – or delving into Italian, Latin, or Russian. But then I took a notion to try Esperanto, and the idea stuck.

So I’m learning basic Esperanto, to build on the impromptu lesson I got from a stranger on the streets of Galway once. It’s more out of linguistic curiosity than any practical ambition; obscure William Shatner films aside, I seldom encounter the language in social or cultural context. So it was an unlikely but pleasing coincidence to come across Esperanto in a comic book.

Saga, written by Brian K. Vaughan, drawn by Fiona Staples, and published by Image Comics, is a sci-fi adventure fantasy whose first two volumes (of eight published to date) I picked up on spec last week. It won’t be to all tastes – there’s graphic sex and violence – but it’s an uncommonly imaginative, funny, and unpredictable work for fans of heady, beautifully drawn graphic novels.

The main storyline follows Alana and Marko, lovers from worlds at war with each other, one a moon of the other. Alana’s home planet, Landfall, uses a language called Language – English, in the comic – while Marko’s home moon, Wreath, uses one called Blue which is actually Esperanto.

Marko speaks Language as well, but few people (or creatures) seem to know Blue except for the moon’s natives. This asymmetry can be bypassed with technology:

[click images to enlarge]

Blue features liberally in Saga but is not translated in footnotes, so non-Esperantists must use context and educated guesswork to infer the meaning, or else patch the text into Google Translate. For the most part the sense can be grasped in situ.

For this reader, it helped that Esperanto draws on Romance languages. My knowledge of French would not have helped me much with the next line, but passive exposure to other languages did, along with the initial Duolingo training:

Bauer’s Family Tree of Printing Types

In 1937, a hundred years after its founding, the Bauer Type Foundry issued Bauer’s Family Tree of Printing Types:

I know little about typeface design, still less its history, so I can’t comment on the accuracy. But I like the idea of a family tree of types, and it’s a fine presentation: the fonts are like colourful garden birds preening peaceably in the sun, each showing off its unique qualities.

For detail and supplementary text, see Steven Heller’s post at Print magazine, which brought the tree to my attention.