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
character in the life of the Hungarian immigrant community (181— 196). The appendices include two excerpts from Vázsonyi's notes on certain lexicographic and linguistic problems (197—199) and four Hungarian interview transcripts discussing the learning, knowledge, and preservation of Hungarian in America (200—205). The penultimate section of the book is the Index, an alphabetic list of the English model words with their AH loan word counterparts (206—220). Finally, appendixed to the dictionary are documents and photographs depicting the life of American Hungarians. These include, among other things, a photograph of the Castle Garden, a map of the Calumet region (where, unfortunately, some of the place names appear in such small print that they are extremely difficult to make out), a photograph of Andrew Vázsonyi from 1967, and a reproduction of a page from Vazsonyi's original typescript. Undoubtedly, the most valuable part of Beyond Castle Garden is the dictionary, which is based on a collection of "'Hunglish' words and dialogs" on cards from 120 tapes of interviews with 140 informants conducted between 1964 and 1967. The most interesting feature of the dictionary from a lexicographic point of view is no doubt the fact that "the examples are not invented sentences but instances of actual spoken language use —a feature of this dictionary which became an innovation of English lexicography only in 1987 when the Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary was published" (21). The dictionary in Beyond Castle Garden is an invaluable document of a now extinct variety of American Hungarian, which, as the editor points out, is thus rescued for posterity (21). If it is appropriate to say that Andrew Vázsonyi, the original compiler of the dictionary, rescued AH for posterity, it is equally appropriate to say that Miklós Kontra, the editor, rescued Andrew Vázsonyi's manuscript and cards for aftertime. Had it not been for the editor's determination to finish the work that Vázsonyi's death in 1986 prevented the collector and compiler from 178
