Several serious problems face a Committee on the Historical Dictionary in planning for the proposed Dictionary of Canadian English. At present under study are means of publicizing the project, negotiating adequate financial sponsorship and securing a capable editorial staff, with headquarters handy to research centers and the publisher's offices. These cannot be taken up here, but will be reported upon at ensuing meetings of the Association.

The basic problem concerns acquisition of the dated citations which will serve as the framework of the proposed dictionary. It is an arduous task to collect and digest the huge volume of materials necessary to compilation of any comprehensive dictionary based upon historical principles. The Oxford English Dictionary, garnering 9,000,000 quotations through the unpaid labors of 2,000 members of the Philological Society, took forty-four years to publish; and the much less ambitious Dictionary of American English was eighteen years in the making.

When I first began to put my ideas on this subject in some sort of order, I did not realize that I had hit on a topic such as many an aspirant to the degree of Master or Doctor of Education, driven to writing dreary theses on ‘A Comparison of the Vocabulary Assimilation of Monoglot and Bilingual Children of Schoolgoing Age, and an Examination of certain Findings of Some Welsh Investigators on the Problem of Bilingualism, with special reference to South African Conditions,’ or, more briefly, ‘Analysis of Chemistry Text Books, 1935,’ must have searched for in vain. But how beautifully it shapes itself: Preface, with modest and grateful acknowledgments to the Director of Studies; Pre-History; the Antiquarians of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; The Germanic Invasion; Anglo-Saxon v. Latin and Greek; Eng. Lang, and Lit; The Cambridge Rebellion; The Problem Today; The Problem with special reference to Canada, South Africa, or wherever it may be; Notes; Bibliography!

It is not surprising that many a conscientious language teacher is somewhat dismayed at the suggestion that his or her already arduous task should be further complicated by the introduction of scientific linguistic techniques. Languages have been taught for generations, nay for centuries, by more or less traditional standardised methods, and innovations in this work must naturally encounter the same passive, if not active, resistance that they, meet in other fields of human endeavour.

Not the least discouraging factors determining such attitudes are the controversial nature of many linguistic issues and the forbidding hierarchy of unfamiliar technical terms about whose meaning and regular application scientific linguists themselves are by no means always in accord. The progressive teacher wishing to gain insight into some aspect of linguistics must be armed with fortitude when embarking upon the reading of a serious linguistic paper, where he is liable to encounter such terms as suprasegmental, bipolar, dyad, idiolect and the like.