A treasury of Englishes

This four-volume publication is the second version, envisaged already at the planning of the project, of the monumental overview of World Englishes, first launched in 2004 as the two-volume Handbook of Varieties of English. The individual contributions, each covering the phonology or morphosyntax of a specific variety, are by and large identical in the 2004 and 2008 versions, but the overall structure is different: the more recent, ‘derived’ version is organized according to region, whereas the two 2004 volumes focused on worldwide phonology and morphosyntax respectively. Admittedly, the new version retains the same organization to a degree, in that each regional volume first features the phonology of all its varieties and then morphosyntax. In my view, this is a pity, as a coherent presentation of a variety would clearly have been more readerfriendly, but it would presumably have required a considerable amount of re-editing. The volumes can be purchased separately, each including an interactive CDROM featuring recordings of all varieties described in the four volumes, interactive maps, website links and an extensive bibliography. Other features retained in the 2008 version are the general introduction and bibliography, as well as the listing of instructions/recommendations to the contributors as to what features and aspects to consider. Otherwise the volumes are self-contained, regional handbooks, each with an illuminating historical, demographic and linguistic introduction by the ‘local’ editor(s) and with regionally based synopses of phonological and morphosyntactic features instead of the worldwide typologies found in the 2004 version. Another difference introduced in the four-volume version is the inclusion of study questions relating to each variety, based on the written texts as well as the CD-ROMdata. The new version is thus clearly more learner-oriented and is launched as a ‘Mouton textbook’, according to the blurb.