Jemenetisches Worterbuch.

• Author: Kaye, Alan S.

The author states in his foreword that Yemen is "one of the least-documented areas of the Arab world," and this is especially true in the field of lexicography." This might have been true in 1989 when this book was published, but with Moshe Piamenta's (1990, 1991) two-volume Dictionary of Post-Classical Yemeni Arabic (Leiden: E. J. Brill), the situation has definitely improved. Strangely enough, Deboo's dictionary was not used by Piamenta in the latter's work, nor was Deboo aware of Piamenta's work either.

Deboo's dictionary is an alphabetic compilation of the published materials of Peter Behnstedt, Werner Diem, S. D. Goitein, and Ettore Rossi, among others. Consequently, it is almost exclusively a listing of the vocabulary of Northern Yemen (with 163 place names, pp. xiii-xiv), although the author writes that "a few South Yemeni words are included" (p. ix).

How does Deboo's dictionary compare with Piamenta's? To put it bluntly, there is no comparison. Piamenta lists, e.g., ba, imperfect yabi `to come' (1990:43); this is not listed by Deboo. The very characteristic bannad `to close' is cited by Piamenta (1990:40) (a Persian loanword from the present stem of bastan `to knot; tie'); yet it is not in the work undergoing review, and so on.

In terms of using Deboo's dictionary, it is awkward to see fayn, fayna, fen `where', while directly under that citation one reads fayn, fen `to...