SINCLAIR ROBINSON and Donald Smith`s Dictionary of Canadian French/ Dictionnaire du francais canadien (Stoddart, 292 pages, $18.95 paper), which should properly be called a glossary, is far from an authoritative work on the French language in North America. Then again, it`s not trying to be. Using thematic categories (sports, weather, the body, clothes, and a very large miscellaneous category), this guide skips across quebecois French to give a variety of useful expressions. I detected no mistakes, and picked up some welcome new terms. Essentially, the book is a guide, the first one aimed at people from outside Quebec (French-speaking or not) who are trying to figure out what`s going on here linguistically. That`s why, along with the Quebec word and its English equivalent, the authors, both university professors, have supplied the "official" French term. As well, there is a section on grammar and pronunciation, which is the first popularized attempt 1 know of to explain quebecois sentence structure in a more than anecdotal fashion. With its 5,000 entries, this glossary strives to be helpful, and is not merely the record of the authors` obsessions, as is the case with Leandre Bergeron`s The Quebecois Dictionary (1982), which is really a compendium of his interest in bodily functions and anglicisms. Helpful, avoiding the exotic, Robinson and Smith`s contribution to the inexact science of the quebecois language will probably show up soon in the collections of translators and students.