Languages, Part 3
Wiktionary
Dictionaries
Every living,
written language needs to have a dictionary, and it needs to have a living
literature in production, and readers of that literature.
The vital question
of the literature, and the readership of the literature in a given language, is
one that we will return to, towards the end of this course.
The dictionary
serves the literature. The dictionary we are referring to is the kind that
PanSALB calls a “monolingual explanatory dictionary”, so as to distinguish it
from bilingual dictionaries, which serve the purpose of translation from one
language to another. Such dictionaries are invariably in two halves, e.g.
Khosa-English/English-Xhosa.
We will return to
the important question of translation in the next part. Let it suffice for now
to note that the existence of translation dictionaries is a double-edged sword.
On the one side it brings a language into cognisance by different language
speakers, and so makes it accessible to more readers and speakers. But on the
other side, bilingual dictionaries open the less advantaged language up to
domination by the more powerful language. The consequence can be that the
intellectuals of an African language-group, for example, can be drawn off into
the pool of the other and in particular colonial language, such as English, for
example.
Further, the
commonality of English (or Afrikaans) as the other language in the bilingual
dictionaries of the nine indigenous official languages keeps the colonisers’
languages in the position of mediating between the indigenous languages. The
publication of, say, a Zulu-Venda / Venda-Zulu dictionary seems a long way
away, but until such dictionaries are available, the literary relationship
between those two languages will continue to be passed through the cultural
filter of English, at least to some extent, to the disadvantage of the two
African languages.
The safety of a
language cannot be secured by the mere existence of bilingual dictionaries.
There has to be a dictionary of the language, in the language itself - the kind
that PanSALB calls a “monolingual explanatory dictionary”. And it has to be
kept up to date with the development of the language, so that it is a
transmitter of that development to all the language-speakers, writers and
readers.
In a later part of
this course we will look at the example of Kiswahili, at its outstanding
success as an international language, and at the history of Kiswahili-Kiswahili
dictionaries, which several generations ago superseded the bilingual
translation dictionaries that the Christian missionaries had originally
created.
PanSALB outsourced its central task
The case for the
creation of a monolingual explanatory dictionary for each of the nine
indigenous official languages is incontrovertible. If these languages are to
survive, it must be done, and done quickly. Therefore it is PanSALB’s job.
PanSALB has outsourced this job to nine “National Lexicography Units” (NLUs)
located in academic institutions. These are “Section 29” not-for-profit companies,
dispersed around the country, and there is no trace of their names and contact
details on the PanSALB web site.
More to the point, there are no (monolingual) dictionaries. None. There are rumours
of a Zulu one, and rumours of a Venda one, but so far, no reference, name,
publisher, vendor, price, or anything. All information to the contrary will be
gratefully received by the Communist University.
Why Wiktionary?
Dictionaries are
registers of words in use. The only source of words in use is the users, who
are the speakers, writers and readers of the language.
It follows that the
creation of a dictionary has to be a mass project, which cannot in practice be
effected by obscure and little-known initiatives such as PanSALB’s “NLUs”.
Wiktionary is an existing Internet structure that is available, free, to anyone
wanting to enter a mass, collaborative project to compile a dictionary in any
language.
Wiktionary is a
well-organised form of “crowdsourcing”. The Wikipedia entry on crowdsourcing in fact
describes dictionary-compilation as a classical form of crowdsourcing. For
example, it says:
“The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) may provide one of the earliest
examples of crowdsourcing. An open call was made to
the community for contributions by volunteers to identify all words in the
English language and provide example quotations of their usages for each one.
They received over 6 million submissions over a period of 70 years.”
Wiktionaries of
South African languages already exist. They are listed in this table:
|
NLU
|
Wiktionary URL
|
|
Zulu
|
|
|
Xhosa
|
|
|
Afrikaans
|
|
|
English
|
|
|
Northern Sotho
|
No wiktionary yet
[start one]
|
|
Tswana
|
|
|
Sotho
|
|
|
Tsonga
|
|
|
Swati
|
|
|
Venda
|
No wiktionary yet
[start one]
|
|
Ndebele
|
No wiktionary yet
[start one]
|
So why is PanSALB
not promoting these Wiktionary projects?
Wiktionary is part
of the family of collaborative projects that includes Wikipedia, which is one
of the most-visited sites in the whole world. All of these projects are created
by, and maintained by volunteers.
With a Wiktionary
project, the dictionary is being published as it is being created. Users can
have the benefit of the work, long before it is ready for publication in
hard-copy form (if that form is even considered necessary). It may actually
prove to be very difficult to publish hard-copy dictionaries, even if there is
a will. The languages should not be held hostage for the sake of this
semi-obsolete form of publication, as desirable as it may be to have such
hard-copy works.
The Communist
University would like to hear from anyone who has been assisting in the
compilation of South African, or other African-language Wiktionaries.
·
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