Be careful

 NEWS No 17 Gough Square, London Samuel Johnson compiled his Dic- tionary (1755) at the above address, and the above address still stands. Thousands of tourists visit it every year, most of whom appear to be Americans, and it must be one of the very few shrines to lexicography in the world at large, leave alone in the English-using world. It is in need of repair, however. Its last major renovation was in 1911, land. Requiem for a Small Language On 13 July 84, the International Herald Tribune reported efforts by scholars to record a Caucasian language on the edge of oblivion. Only one man, now 82 and living near Istanbul in Turkey, still understands Oubykh, whose speakers once num- bered 50,000. Oubykh's decline began after 1864, when Muslim herders and farmers left Russia in the wake of the Crimean War and moved into Turkey. In due course the Turkish language began to crowd out the older language among the tribesfolk, until today only one elder can speak it in full. When Tevfik Ese