[Lexicog] New feature on Kamusi Internet Living Swahili Dictionary

[d_z_o]

FYI, an announcement from Martin Benjamin at Yale U. about the Kamusi
online Swahili dictionary. It concerns an attempt to enable it to
display results in different ways, which could be of more useful to
users.

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
___________________________

Sorry for the impersonal letter, but I thought you might be
interested in something I've been working on recently, that just went
live this weekend:

I'm happy to announce the launch of an important new feature for the
Internet Living Swahili Dictionary: The Kamusi Project Grouping
Tool.  The Grouping Tool (Zana Jumuishi) solves the problem of how to
arrange dictionary results for Kamusi users, which until now has been
a substantial weakness for the project.  As with most Kamusi Project
features, the Grouping Tool will only be successful if participants
use it to improve the data we make available to the public.  The
Grouping Tool is also an important step in our efforts to build a
robust platform that can be used to develop resources for other world
languages.

The basic problem that the Grouping Tool solves is one that Swahili
teachers and students will find frustratingly familiar.  For
technical computer reasons, the Kamusi lexicon has always been
displayed in purely alphabetical order, grouped by keyword. (Other
Swahili dictionaries are arranged by "root" form, which can be even
more frustrating.)  Students go to www.yale.edu/swahili, do a search
for a word, and get a list of results - then, rather than do further
research to figure out which word is most appropriate for their
context, they simply use the one at the top of the list.

With the Grouping Tool, if you have a working knowledge of both
Swahili and English, you can go to any term in the dictionary, and
with a few clicks you can arrange the results in a way that makes
sense.  You can group entries that have a similar sense, and you can
rank the most important entries above the less common.  When students
are confronted with confusing choices, they can email their teachers
and the teachers can group each keyword in a couple of minutes.  Once
a term has been grouped, the arrangement goes live immediately, and
all future Kamusi users will benefit from a visually intuitive,
logical display of the dictionary data.

We designed the Grouping Tool to be easy to learn and simple to use.
Once you are registered with the Kamusi Project, you can access the
Grouping Tool by searching for any word in the dictionary and
clicking the "Grouping Tool" link above the search results.  Your
contributions will be credited on our Participants page after they
have gone through an editorial review process (we review every
submission to weed out errors and spam) - as with other Kamusi
Project features, such as the Edit Engine and the Photo Uploader,
participants are always acknowledged for the work they contribute.

More detailed instructions for the Grouping Tool, and a cool photo
tour, are available at
http://research.yale.edu/swahili/serve_pages/groupingtool_en.php .
(Ukurasa huo utapatikana kwa Kiswahili baadaye kidogo...)

I hope you will find this new tool easy and useful.  (I think it's
more than that - I think it's a tremendously exciting lexicographical
event - but that might just be my inner dictionary geek speaking :-
) )  If the community of knowledgeable users makes use of the
Grouping Tool regularly, the online Kamusi can be improved
substantially in a matter of months, making for a much better
resource for everyone interested in the Swahili language.

The Kamusi Project has many more new features under development,
including an online Swahili curriculum that will help learners at all
levels, and that will be adaptable for many additional languages.  If
you would like to support the project, whether through your
intellectual contributions or much-needed financial donations, you
can find more information at
http://research.yale.edu/swahili/serve_pages/donate_en.php

Please enjoy the Grouping Tool!

Cheers,
Martin Benjamin
Kamusi Project Editor
Yale Council on African Studies
www.yale.edu/swahili


----- End forwarded message -----





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