A Review of the Oxford Chichewa-English/English-Chichewa Dictionary by Steven Paas

Abstract

This article reviews the Oxford Chichewa-English/English-Chichewa Dictionary compiled by Steven Paas, published in 2016 by Oxford University Press in Cape Town. Upon a review of the dictionary, a number of issues arise. The dictionary's significance rests in its use as reference material for language learners, its semantic precision and the relevance with which translation and other disciplines treat it. Regardless of its wide coverage of the Chichewa and English lexicons, the dictionary has a number of flaws which are misleading and confusing for the dictionary's users. Such errors include ambiguity over dictionary type, inclusion of proper nouns as lexical entries, lack of detailed grammatical information and silence on morphological typology among others. This paper, therefore, concludes that the dictionary leaves a lot to be desired and recommends that the next edition of the dictionary take into account the highlighted issues.