10
votes
How often are dictionary etymologies wrong?
We can't really determine whether an etymology in a dictionary is "correct" or not since we don't know the ground truth to compare. But the editors of etymological dictionaries have taken a great job ...
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8
votes
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What is meant by "s/he flies" in Plains Cree dictionary?
In nêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree) and other languages in the family, the "words" are as you say, more like "phrases".
The concept of "is" doesn't exist in the same way in ...
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7
votes
Why do dictionaries use non-standard IPA symbols
IPA is only a set of symbols and approximate phonetic values, and there is no mandate to transcribe English words any particular way. The variants [eə, ɛə, ɛə̯, ɛː] are all within IPA, and the ...
- 75.3k
7
votes
Does a scientific methodology exist for evaluating bilingual dictionaries?
That answer on Spanish SE is misleading on key points - "neural networks" have nothing to do with dictionaries.
Let's step back and imagine that we are tasked with creating bilingual dictionaries ...
- 7,293
7
votes
Why haven't the renowned etymological dictionaries for Indo-European languages been updated?
More recent etymological dictionaries have been published, but generally by different people with different names.
Ernout, for example, died in 1973, so I'm not surprised he hasn't updated his Latin ...
- 59k
6
votes
What language pairs are underserved, and would most benefit from machine-learned bilingual tools?
This question is very important and possible to answer empirically, however, words and concepts do not map 1:1 across languages so the mentioned assumption that bilingual dictionaries will have a ...
- 7,293
6
votes
Accepted
How to interpret the only available Middle Persian dictionary?
Here in Mackenzie’s dictionary verbs are normally cited in the infinitive form, but if (as in this case) the infinitive is not attested, the dictionary quotes the present stem followed by a hyphen. So ...
- 23.2k
5
votes
Any free, good and extensive word lists for languages other than English?
Yes there are.
There are several choices:
Wiktionary Filter the entries by category language to generate language specific word lists. Lots of additional information (POS, inflection, meanings, ...
- 28.6k
5
votes
Online etymology dictionaries for French, beyond CNTRL?
If you have access to a good library you can consult von Wartburg's Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch in 25 volumes. There is also an abridged French translation.
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5
votes
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Greek: differences between words marked as αρχαιοπρεπής, λόγιος or παλαιότερα
παλαιότερα is not "more ancient use", but "older". And that's significant: it can refer to an older Demotic form which is now obsolete. In fact, it is far likelier to be Demotic than Katharevousa.
...
- 3,235
5
votes
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glossary/dictionary corpus for NLP task
Two resources are particularly popular.
WordNet
Wiktionary
- 3,617
5
votes
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How often are dictionary etymologies wrong?
I'm going to describe the situation in Modern Greek.
In Modern Greek, you will get good etymologies in the the contemporary dictionaries, Babiniotis' and Triantafyllidis', both of which date from ...
- 3,235
5
votes
What is meant by "s/he flies" in Plains Cree dictionary?
The state appears to be "[something] [verb:is] [adjective]", and the quality "[agent] [verb:is] [adjective]". Why don't they leave these out of the dictionary and just have the ...
- 59k
5
votes
What was the first human language (lets call it X) for which there is actually an X-English dictionary?
Sumerian and Egyptian are the two languages we have the oldest understandable written texts from. Which one counts as "older" is a difficult question to answer, because we can't make ...
- 59k
5
votes
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How a learner of a polysynthetic language like Arapaho would use an electronic or printed dictionary?
You can ask that question with a number of different auxiliaries – would, should, could, did, does... each generating a different answer. My answer is not about the Arapaho project (which seems to be ...
- 75.3k
4
votes
Online etymology dictionary for Latin
The Indo-European Lexicon out of UT-Austin will give you the Proto Indo-European root for many Latin words. That would be at least a partial solution. Here is the main page, and the page for Latin.
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4
votes
Online etymology dictionaries for French, beyond CNTRL?
Wiktionary has etymology entries going back to Old French, Latin, and Proto-Indo-European (PIE), e.g., https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bleu#Etymology.
- 141
4
votes
Online etymology dictionaries for French, beyond CNTRL?
The Littré is available online free of charge. It is old (1877) but can provide some interesting etymological insights
Example:
- 1,528
4
votes
Conventions on sorting phrases with whitespace and punctuation (for an index)
I don't know that there is a standard -- there could be one. I would favor using the default sorting algorithm, on the grounds that this is what users who look things up a lot will be most familiar ...
- 12.3k
4
votes
What is the correct way to cite the "Harvard General Inquirer Dictionary" in a paper?
There is no unique standard for the form of citations, either in linguistics, or in general. The journal (etc.) that you are submitting to has it's own citation style. Since this is apparently an ...
- 75.3k
3
votes
Accepted
Can anyone recommend a good, free, and online Greek-to-English dictionary?
I usually use different dictionaries when I want to know the intricacies of a word, as I have not yet found a perfect one.
My first stop is usually on Wiktionary. The Greek one has much more entries ...
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3
votes
Where can I find free dictionaries for various languages?
(Comm. Wiki because it's not an answer but a wordy comment, sorry)
What you're trying to do is called sentence generator. Googling for this phrase shows up quite a few ready-made services on the ...
3
votes
Sumerian cuneiform dictionary?
Yes, there is:
http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/tools/cuneify/
Steve Tinney at UPENN has written a tool called “Cuneify” as part of the ATF* format for encoding cuneiform texts, itself in turn part ...
- 465
3
votes
Accepted
Spoken Arabic dictionary/corpus?
A good starting place to look for corpora is the CLARIN Virtual Language Observatory (VLO). This query searches for "spoken arabic" and restricts the results to hits where the language is labelled as "...
- 28.6k
3
votes
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Are there any evocative dictionaries?
Yes, there are - if I understood you correctly, but I've seen only one so far, for the Russian language. It's called Русский ассоциативный словарь (Russian Associative Dictionary), in two volumes.
...
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3
votes
Accepted
Where to download phonetic word list for English
For English, the CMU dictionary is the must usual source. You do have to convert the text to IPA letters in some font because it uses ARPAbet, but it is a straightforward process.
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3
votes
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How to understand the etymology from the American Heritage Dictionary?
Yes, mostly. It is first attested in Middle English; it is borrowed from Old French frangible, which is borrowed from Medieval frangibilis (an alternative analysis which they do not adopt is that the ...
- 75.3k
3
votes
What is meant by "s/he flies" in Plains Cree dictionary?
As for the question asked in the title, "s/he flies" means that some animate referent flies. Cree only makes an animate versus inanimate distinction, and "s/he" is one way of ...
- 75.3k
3
votes
What was the first human language (lets call it X) for which there is actually an X-English dictionary?
One interpretation of the question is, what was the first language X for which there is an X-English dictionary? The dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot knyght (1538) is probably the first such dictionary: ...
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