Reviewed by: Les mots du COVID: en créole martiniquais et créole guadeloupéen par Raphaël Confiant et Hector Poullet Jeremy Patterson Confiant, Raphaël et Hector Poullet. Les mots du COVID: en créole martiniquais et créole guadeloupéen. Caraïbéditions, 2021. ISBN 978-2-37-311107-1. Pp. 48. Plenty of ink has been spilled since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and of course much of it, if not scientific publications and research, has been very polemical in nature. Much of the public is probably to the point of wanting to read about anything other than the COVID-19 pandemic. It is, therefore, refreshing to have a little book like Les mots du COVID that provides a different perspective on the pandemic, one that is not combative or debating the scientific merits of different public health measures. Confiant and Poullet, from Martinique and Guadeloupe respectively, instead present an enjoyable and short journey through the COVID-specific vocabulary that has developed in their respective Creoles. They begin with a short preface on "Traduire la science en créole," in which they raise the question "comment […] à partir d'une langue principalement orale, parvenir à rendre les mots et expressions scientifiques?" (9). They do not actually answer the question, or at least not directly. They do point out that even languages with a much longer tradition of writing face the same challenge when new scientific phenomena, such as a new virus or pandemic, present themselves. Their answer to the question is, rather, their lexical work in proposing and recording Creole terms that relate to the COVID-19 epidemic. They are both well qualified to be engaging in this lexical undertaking. Both of the authors have published and worked on a variety of Creole dictionaries. Raphaël Confiant, even as he transitioned years ago from Creole to French in his published novels, has continued to work and advocate for the development of Martinican Creole. In 2007, he published Dictionnaire créole martiniquais-français. Hector Poullet published Dictionnaire des créoles comparés de Guadeloupe et de Martinique with Jude Duranty in 2020 and has worked on a variety of other dictionaries and lexicons as well, such as two volumes on Les mots du sexe en créole de la Guadeloupe. Their COVID book presents a variety of terms and expressions with useful examples for each. The first entry is quite familiar in the COVID-19 era—the French term "Antivax," which comes out in Creole as "Moun ki kont vaksen ora-kou" (15). Many of the terms are similarly recognizable at a global scale and even across many languages, from comorbidité ("malady-batjé") to déconfinement ("dézankazaj") to pandémie ("maladi-tout-wonlatè") to quarantaine ("karantjou-fèmen"). Others are more specific to the French or French Caribbean context—convoi sanitaire ("vréyaj-lasanté"), masque FFP ("mas ka koré partikil"), motifs impérieux ("bligasion red-mato"). In all, the forty-five terms that the authors present in Creole, with examples in both Creole and French translation, contribute to their effort to enrich their Creole languages, their intent "d'apporter [End Page 169] notre pierre aux efforts d'enrichissement lexical de nos créoles sans lesquels ces derniers n'ont pas d'avenir" (11). It is thus felicitous, if not a bit ironic, that out of the deadliest pandemic in recent history, Confiant and Poullet should manage to bring linguistic life through their demonstration of the ongoing vitality of both Martinican and Guadeloupean Creoles. [End Page 170] Jeremy Patterson Bob Jones University (SC) Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French