Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

BOOK REVIEWS - Csaba Czeglédi: Endre Vázsonyi: Túl a Kacegárdán, Culmet-vidéki amerikai magyar szótár [Beyond Castle Garden: An American Hungarian Dictionary of the Calumet Region]. Edited and introduction by Miklós Kontra. A Magyarország-kutatás könyv-tára XV. Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány, 1995. 242 pp

CSABA CZEGLÉDI ANDREW VÁZSONYI: TÚL A KECEGÁRDÁN, CALUMETVIDÉKI AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓTÁR [Beyond Castle Garden: An American Hungarian Dictionary of the Calumet Region]. Edited and introduction by Miklós Kontra. A Magyarságkutatás könyvtára XV. Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány, 1995. 242 pp. Beyond Castle Garden is a unique dialect dictionary

—and more. Two of its prominent features make it a particularly important book: (1) The dictionary was compiled on the basis of tape-recorded actual language use and (2) it is the first, last, and only record of a now extinct variety of Hungarian. Given the startling rate at which languages disappear on this planet, Beyond Castle Garden is an especially valuable document. The vast majority of the world's languages are moribund. Around 1990, merely five speakers of Iowa were alive, only two old people spoke the Eyak language of Alaska as their native language, and the Ubykh language of the Northwest Caucasus, a record holder among the world's languages boasting some 80 consonants, had no more than a single speaker. At the same time, only 2 of the 20 native languages of Alaska were still spoken by children, 80% of the 187 languages of North America and Canada were on the verge of extinction, and 90% of the 250 aboriginal languages of Australia were "VERY near extinction" 175