[Lexicog] Listing Words for Prestige and Software

[Benjamin J Barrett]

An acquaintance of mine from the Kenkyusha lexicography staff is in
town, so I've had a couple of opportunities to speak with him about
dictionary writing.

One of the issues I asked him about is the inclusion of difficult words
in dictionaries for beginners.

The word I mentioned to him is pugilist, listed in Kodansha's Jpn -> Eng
dictionary. The dictionary, which includes furigana pronunciation
characters, is aimed at junior high and high school students not yet
proficient in Chinese characters. The dictionary isn't very large, so I
was suprised to see pugilist listed. It also brought back many bad
memories of not finding basic words in J/E dictionaries that were
flooded with difficult words.

His response was that quite often an editor or publisher *wants* certain
words included for reasons other than utility.

That certainly makes a lot of sense, now. I can certainly see why an
editor wouldn't care that sliding door (fusuma), futon clothes pin
(futon basami), extension cord (enchou coodo) and other words that would
have made my life easier weren't listed in a dictionary that includes
words that would enhance the dictionary for being scholarly.

Another was software. The files I received when I reviewed a few of the
400,000 + entries were all done in Notepad. He said that the entire
dictionary was done with text files! I think I'll stick to the basic
input editor I built with Visual Basic because of the codes it adds
automatically, but will definitely consider text files for editing and
expansion...

Lexicographically Enlightedly Yours
Benjamin Barrett, Graduate Student
Linguistics Department, University of Washington
students.washington.edu
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