[Gerard Meijssen (Re: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies) writes:]
> Jim Breen wrote:
> >>>Jack & Naree wrote:
> >>>>An American-English dictionary, and a (Commonwealth) English
> >>>>Dictionary then.
> >>>>Otherwise, it has to be all listed as seperate entries.
> >
> >Um. What about words that are spelled differently within and
> >between Commonwealth countries? Or words like accoutrement/accouterment
> >which are spelled differently within the US?
> >
> >Of course they shouldn't be separate entries, but Gerard's
> >database design seems to be dicating that one.
> >
> The fact that words are spelled differently needs to be addressed in one
> way or the other.
Absolutely.
> Even in old style wiktionary there needs to be
> something both at the accoutrement and the accouterment article in order
> to make them "findable".
Agreed.
> The English Wiktionary nowadays frowns on the
> use of redirects so it is more substantial than that.
Yes, in fact it is the frowning on redirects that led me to looking at
the UW proposals. I was looking at the Wiktionary structure to see if it
would be a suitable environment for my Japanese-Multilingual dictionary
database. I ran into a number of problems, one of which was the "no
redirects" policy, and someone suggested I look at UW.
> In itself there is no value added to the fact that
it has its own record
> in the tables Expression and Word. The words can be connected through
> SynTrans to the same meaning. They can be related through Relation to
> say that they are alternative ways of spelling.
>
> Consequently, there is nothing special in having both accoutrement and
> accouterment exist within the database. The thing that is relevant is
> that they are both shown to the user of the dictionary who looks up
> either Expression.
Absolutely.
> When they are alternate spellings within the same
> Language, they will be seen as such. So as far as I am concerned, this
> seems to me to be much ado about nothing.
Provided:
(a) the essential information (senses, POS, etymology, etc.) only has to
be entered once, and remains the same for all the spelling and
orthographical variants;
(b) the user, on entering either form, gets the one collection of
information which shows all the alternative forms of the word, then
I really have no objection. I can't understand why they are in different
database records, and in the case of my own JMdict (XML) they aren't,
but then I don't use SynTrans, etc.
> >>>>Frankly I favour the first option,
because to non-American-English
> >>>>speakers, the American spellings are simply misspellings.
> >
> >Well that's news to this non-American-English speaker 8-)} I
> >don't regard them as "misspellings" at all. Just different.
> I would regard all accepted words as Expressions.
In order to know more
> about an expression, you have to add more information to enrich the
> experience. It will be for instance be possible to date the first
> accepted use of the later spelling.
That's useful (and very often difficult to establish).
> The etymology is also different.
Not really. I don't know about the languages I don't speak (i.e.
everything apart from English, Japanese, French and a little Latin), but
in general the spelling has little or nothing to do with the etymology.
> Then again, this may not be of interest to you but
it is there for those
> who find it of interest.
As a lexicographer I am always interested in etymology. I am a bit
mystified by the view that it is somehow coupled to spelling. In the
languages I know, spelling used to be highly fluid and individualistic, and
has only recently been pinned down into recognized norms. In the case of
English, the fact that there are two "schools" of spelling (which only
affect a minority of words) is largely the result of the simplifications
made and promulgated by one man: Noah Webster. Interesting indeed, but
nothing to do with etymology.
Cheers
Jim
--
Jim Breen
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology, Tel: +61 3 9905 9554
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
(Monash Provider No. 00008C) ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学