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BOOK REVIEWS
If this romanization was a written language with a large corpus of literature which would be impractical to rewrite, there might be some argument for the conservative attitude which says it is easier to have new students learn a few orthographic inconsistencies rather than revise everything which has been printed. However, here we would not be wiping out past efforts but merely simplifying what is yet to come and we would be giving the student all possible assistance in the quite prodigious task of learning a foreign language. The polemics are quick to appear concerning the relative merits of one romanization over another, and the results will often be essentially a statement of the aesthetic values of the two discussants. In my opinion these discussions are generally pointless and it is not my intention to talk in such terms here. One romanization is as good as another as long as they both use a minimum number of symbols and reflect all the necessary features of the given language; i.e., they must be neither redundant nor ambiguous. The point here is simply that the romanization used in this dictionary is in part both redundant and ambiguous. To this extent one might wish that Rev. Cowles had either used one of the more satisfactory existing systems such as that of Yale, or that he had taken the initiative and revised his present romanization in order to reflect more accurately present-day Standard Cantonese. The student would probably have benefited more from this rationalization of the orthography than from the tie-in with other grammars and dictionaries mentioned above.
These comments are, of course, based on the assumption that by Cantonese is meant Standard Cantonese. If this dictionary is in fact designed to record a local variety, a minority speech form, or an elegant but dated pronunciation, then that fact should be made clear.
Another problem is created in this dictionary by the decision to exclude the variant or changed tones. There are a good number of very common terms which will never be heard in any but a changed tone. For example, this dictionary lists l'ong (p. 1073) glossed as 'sugar, sweets', but among speakers of Standard Cantonese the meaning for 'sugar' will appear in this tone while the meaning 'sweets' will appear in the high rising changed tone. Examples of this type are almost unlimited. If the decision has been made to strive for completeness, then the changed tone