[Lexicog] Creation of scientific terminology

[Benjamin Barrett]

I don't know anything about the process, but Hawaiian underwent this
process. I'm not sure where my dictionary has gone to, so I can't check the
degree to which the vocabulary was modernized, but I recall at least words
for a variety of modern items.

I believe the Hawaiian vocabulary modernization has occurred since the
1970s.

HTH
Benjamin Barrett

-----Original Message-----
From: Mali Translation [mailto:translation_mali at sil.org]
Sent: Saturday, 10 April 2004 3:18 AM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Lexicog] Creation of scientific terminology


I am working in a majority West African language (Bambara/Jula).
Systematic efforts are being made by African linguists to create
a new scientific terminology in many domains. The language
lends itself to all kinds of creative and productive word
formation through compounding, prefixes, infixes, suffixes.
I follow these endeavours with great interest.
Let's take an example. The language can coin new
words that express the idea of anti- (antibody, antibiotics,
antipode, anticommunist). While anti- works in all these
cases in a number of Western languages, Jula/Bambara has
at least 4 ways to express the idea that underlies anti-
in each respective case.
Do you know of similar efforts of systematic terminology
creation in a non-Western language that was reduced to
writing not too long ago (say in the last 25 years)?
If yes, can you give examples of how they handled Greek/
Latin prefixes like auto-, bi-, bio-, dia-, endo-, exo-,
equi-, hetero-, homo-, inter-, intra-, iso-, meta-, pseudo-,
trans-?

Fritz Goerling


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