Dictionnaire éwé-français, by Jacques Rongier

Ewe has been the subject of some of the earliest work in African linguistics, it is one of the major languages along the West African littoral zone between Senegal and Nigeria, an important regional language in Ghana, and the most widely spoken language of Togo. Jacques Rongier’s monumental and comprehensive Dictionnaire éwé-français narrows an existing gap. Rongier’s Dictionnaire éwé-français complements his Dictionnaire français-éwé which appeared twenty years earlier (1995). The Dictionnaire éwé-français is even more ambitious in scope. Any modern dictionary of Ewe will invariably be measured against the yardstick of Westermann’s lexicographic masterpiece of early African linguistics, the Wörterbuch der Ewe-Sprache. And indeed, my first reflex upon receipt of the review copy of the Dictionnaire éwé-français was to pick the 1905 edition of Westermann’s book from my shelf, and page through it, with great curiosity as to the differences between the two works.