Listen & Learn Blog

Thought all dictionaries were hand crafted by old men in dusty basements working late into the night? Not this one.

Wordnik, an online dictionary, uses automatic programmes to trawl the web and come up with definitions. It looks at

“…the texts of news feeds, archived broadcasts, the blogosphere, Twitter posts and dozens of other sources for the raw material of Wordnik citations, says Erin McKean, a founder of the company.

Then, when you search for a word, Wordnik shows the information it has found, with no editorial tinkering. Instead, readers get the full linguistic Monty.

“We don’t pre-select and pre-prune,” she said. “We show you what’s out there now. Then we let people decide whether to use a word or not.” (Source: New York Times)

So instead of the word having a static definition which may have been written many years ago, users of Wordnik can see the word’s current meaning or meanings from looking at the example sentences provided.

Take a look at the full article for more information.

What kind of dictionary takes 90 years to complete? One from the ancient world apparently.

Scholars from The University of Chicago have just completed an Assyrian dictionary that was started in 1921. Lots of staff have worked on the project, with scholars from Vienna, Paris, Copenhagen, Jerusalem, Berlin, Helsinki, Baghdad and London in addition to those from the US and Canada.

The dictionary was compiled from words recorded on clay or stone tablets from ruins in Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq.  When the project started the technology used included typewriters and mimeographs. Over 2 million index cards were used. The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is comprised of 21 volumes, around 10,000 pages and 28,000 words. Some volumes only cover one letter.

So what is the value of a dictionary that showcases a language that died so long ago?

Gil Stein, director of the university’s Oriental Institute (the dictionary’s home), has a ready answer:

“The Assyrian Dictionary gives us the key into the world’s first urban civilization,” he says. “Virtually everything that we take for granted … has its origins in Mesopotamia, whether it’s the origins of cities, of state societies, the invention of the wheel, the way we measure time, and most important the invention of writing.

“If we ever want to understand our roots,” Stein adds, “we have to understand this first great civilization.”

The translated cuneiform texts – originally written with wedged-shaped characters – reveal a culture where people expressed joy, anxiety and disappointment about the same events they do today: a child’s birth, bad harvests, money troubles, boastful leaders.

“A lot of what you see is absolutely recognizable – people expressing fear and anger, expressing love, asking for love,” says Matthew Stolper, a University of Chicago professor who worked on the project on and off over three decades. “There are inscriptions from kings that tell you how great they are, and inscriptions from others who tell you those guys weren’t so great. … There’s also lot of ancient versions of `your check is in the mail.’ And there’s a common phrase in old Babylonian letters that literally means `don’t worry about a thing.’” (Source: AP/Seattle Times)

Quite a story!

High school students in Oklahoma can win up to $1,000 for writing a ‘mini-dictionary’ about their school, reports NewsOK.

Sponsored by Oklahoma University’s Institute of US-China Issues, the Newman Young Writer’s Award offers prizes for a single or co-authored submission of a “mini-dictionary/encyclopaedia”. The entries must reflect the character of the school, and “can explore the people, places, slang, or rituals that define their school”.

I love dictionaries, and this sounds like a great creative project! If you’re not a high-school aged Oklahoma resident, why not try out some dictionary or encyclopaedia entries about your target language… in your target language. You could talk about the culture, the language itself, or how and when you use it. Get writing!

North Korea has featured in the news a lot in the past few weeks, mainly showing the 65th anniversary celebrations of the ruling Workers’ Party.

I was interested to find out that a North-South dictionary of the Korean language has been in production for a number of years now. The “Big Dictionary of the Korean People’s Language” was approved in 2004 and was over half completed by the end of last year. It was slated to be finished in 2013, but the project has come across some issues.

Ko Un, the poet who chairs the project, came out this week to draw attention to its impending demise. He told one local paper that since the Cheonan sinking even discussions about expenses have been suspended. Consequently, the two sides have been unable to exchange first drafts, the writing has stopped, and researchers in the South are now looking for other work. (Source: Korea Times)

The two countries have been separated for so long that their common language has divided also.

Small differences are already apparent which can lead to misunderstanding. A toilet in South Korea, for example, is the equivalent of a “powder room.” In the North, it’s a “hygiene room.” President Lee’s surname in the South is pronounced as the letter “e.” In the North, it would be “ree.” The North has adopted Russian words and the South had adopted many more English words. The dictionary would aim to capture the language as it evolves in these different directions.

It must be fascinating for each side to discover the similarities and differences in their languages. Hopefully the compilers of the dictionary can continue on to complete their work.