[Lexicog] English-Vernacular dictionaries?

[David Frank]

In reference to copyright issues on dictionaries, Andrew Dalby has saved me 
from saying some of the things I was going to say, but I will add that you 
can find a list of 'Basic Vocabulary of Mexican Rural Spanish' as Supplement 
C of Bilingual Dictionaries for Indigenous Languages by Bartholomew and 
Schoenhals, 1983. It might help some, though that work directed more at a 
Latin American context.

One idea is to collect a corpus of English texts in the Philippines, or 
wherever you want to compile an English-vernacular dictionary, and use that 
to generate a word list to use as a foundation. English isn't monolithic, 
and what you would consider a core English vocabulary could vary from place 
to place. I would add to this the English index generated by a vernacular 
word list. That wouldn't be so hit-or-miss, since it would help provide a 
way of expressing the concepts in English that are already of concern to the 
vernacular language speakers.

I agree that it would be good if there were a public-domain list of basic 
vocabulary for a dictionary.

-- David Frank 



 
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