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

[Otto Lassen]

Eric Atwell is the radar. He wrote:
"Can anyone point me at research on vocabulary related to Islam,
and how it figures in British dictionaries and corpora?"
".. though "Tajweed" is a term understood by
most British muslims (2.7 million or 5% of the UK population according
to UK Census 2011)".. " "Tajweed" is also not found in the 100-million-word 
British
National Corpus" .
I used your argument against me against Eric Atwell.
You write: "I don't know what you mean by ‘Islamic words’". Ask Eric Atwell. 
For him
"Tajweed" is an islamic word: "refers to the rules governing pronunciation 
during
recitation of the Qur'an" and "understood by most British muslims" (and 
apparently
not by the 95% non-muslims).
What you have not grasped is that the world is bigger than an english 
dictionary.
There are too many words (and their concepts) in the world from science, 
ideologies,
religions, philosophy, social groups etc to be registered in an english 
dictionary
though used by English speaking people.
What about trying to understand my words and the words af Eric Atwell. They 
are all
in the dictionary.
Regards
Otto Lassen


-----Oprindelig meddelelse----- 
From: Alon Lischinsky
Sent: Friday, March 01, 2013 5:16 PM
To: Otto Lassen
Cc: CORPORA discussion forum
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] "Tajweed" in English dictionaries and corpora

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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