[Corpora-List] "Tajweed" in English dictionaries and corpora

[Alon Lischinsky]

On 2013/2/28 Otto Lassen <otto at lassen.mail.dk> wrote:

> If  "Tajweed" should be in English dictionaries and corpora then there
> are more islam words which ought to be in English dictionaries and corpora.

I wonder how this has managed to flow under the radar.

There is no ‘ought to’ about corpora, Otto. Corpora are systematic
compilations of natural language, and no-one gets to decide which
words go into them or not. If a term is used by English speakers when
communicating in English, then it will get included in a corpus
covering that genre. If it's not used, then it won't.

Actually, this is precisely what makes corpora useful to
lexicographers. Dictionaries are intended to provide users with a
guide as to what they can expect a term to mean; it follows that what
they include or not should be dictated by what people say, not by any
intuitions about what counts or not as an English word.

> Does Eric Atwell want all islamic words to included in english?

I don't know what you mean by ‘Islamic words’, but all words used in
English belong in an English dictionary (whether they refer to Islam,
to Christianity, to astrophysics or to cooking). What's so hard to
grasp about that?

A.

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