[Lexicog] Bai and variant words

[Patrick Chew]

Hey there, Bryan -

         So,... my first comment upon reading your post is... what are you
using as standard... if you're using Kunming or Dali Bai, you probably
*will* want to include lexical items from the rest of the major Bai
dialects only because most data from larger metro areas are heavily
sinicized, which is in many ways divergent from the  rest of non-metro
Bai... which  may include many Bai who have come  from less sinicized areas
into larger metro areas... If you take a look at the Baiyu Jianzhi [Sketch
on the Bai language], they provide wordlsits for the three major dialect
areas, so... it'd be good to include that...
         I'm assuming you're using the pinyin devised for Bai... right?

cheers,
-Patrick

At 06:43 PM 10/21/2004, you wrote:

>Hi there,
>
>I have only recently started subscribing to this list, and have only
>recently started serious work on a bilingual dictionary. I am sure you can
>help me with my question. The dictionary I am working on will be heavily
>used in a literacy project. Newly literate readers will depend on the
>dictionary for knowing how to spell words. So I am wondering how to handle
>variants. These might be dialect variants. The dictionary is based on the
>central dialect of this language (Bai, spoken in south west China), but
>within that dialect there are many sub-dialects, some of which are spoken
>very close to the town the writing system is based on. Should we include any
>variants which are in common use, and would be recognised as 'the way they
>speak in such and such a village'? On the one hand I think it would be
>confusing as people would want then want to also write that way, on the
>other hand, if the variant pointed to the standard spelling, maybe people
>would learn the correct spelling through the cross reference.
>
>Bryan




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