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J Milton Cowan

ج. ميلتون كوان

Notable figure 1907–1993 · Source: John Benjamins Publishing, author record: J Milton Cowan · Second source: Charles F. Hockett, "J Milton Cowan" (obituary), Language 71, no. 2 (1995), pp. 341–348

Field: Lexicography

Affiliation

Lexicographer; English edition of Hans Wehr (1961)

Biography

An American linguist born in Salt Lake City, he directed Cornell University's Division of Modern Languages from 1946 and was a pioneer of intensive, linguistically organised language teaching. He translated and edited Hans Wehr's dictionary of contemporary Arabic from German into English, published as A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (Wiesbaden, 1961), with later editions from Ithaca; it became the most widely used bilingual dictionary of modern Arabic among learners worldwide.