Hausa dictionary available

Paul Newman has sent the following message:

Zuwa ga abokai masana Hausa,

     We are pleased to inform you that the Hausa-English / English-Hausa dictionary that we published with Bayero University Press in Kano is now available outside of Nigeria. If you are interested in obtaining a copy for yourselves, or if you would like for your library to acquire a copy, the book can be purchased from African Books Collective in Oxford, see https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/hausa-dictionary-for-everyday-use.

     This new printing is essentially the same as the Kano edition, however we were fortunate in being able to correct a few typos and other small errors that were found in the original.

Best,

Paul & Roxana

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New publications in Central Chadic

Two important publications in Central Chadic have appeared at Rüdiger Köppe Verlag:

• A Dictionary of Hdi by Zygmunt Frajzyngier et al. (195 pp., € 34,80)
• A large book containing two volumes: The Lamang Language and Dictionary by H. Ekkehard Wolff (1110 pp., € 128,00). It can also be ordered as two separate volumes: Lamang Language (501 pp., € 68,00 ) and Lamang Dictionary (609 pp, € 78,00)

Follow the above links to find out more about these publications.

New publication on Ngas

Book cover: Reimer

A new publication (in English) on Ngas has just appeared at Reimer Verlag: Herrmann Jungraithmayr und Miroslava Holubová: The Ngas Language (Shik Ngas). Fundamentals of Grammar • Texts • Dictionary (Sprache und Oralität in Afrika, Vol. 28), 280 pp., 30 col. ill. and 1 b+w ill., 17 x 24 cm, hard cover, ISBN 978-3-496-01555-0, Price: 79,00 €.

The book presents a detailed outline of the grammar and a Ngas-English dictionary of some 2.000 lexical entries.

More info on the book can be found on the publisher’s website.

 

Sketch grammars for dictionaries: SIL workshop in Cameroon

(via SIL) Linguists representing 16 African languages are attending a workshop this month conducted by SIL Cameroon in Yaoundé to produce sketch grammars suitable to introduce bilingual or trilingual dictionaries. The UK Kay Williamson Educational Fund (KWEF) will eventually publish several of the dictionaries in which these sketch grammars appear. (continue reading at SIL website)

Share your data with others !

Recently, I have come across Lexique Pro, an interactive lexicon viewer and editor developed by SIL in Mali. It can read and display a lexicon database if it is a text file with “standard format markers”, i.e.  the kind of data produced by SIL’s Toolbox, e.g.

\lx doki
\ps n
\ge horse

The goal is sharing your data with the rest of the world:

You’ve spent years working on your dictionary, but how easy is it for others to make the most of it? Are the speakers of the language getting any benefit from it? Is it user-friendly enough for a non-linguist to look at? Are translators making the best use of it? Are partner organisations using it? Do university professors have it on their computers? Is it in local schools, government offices and cyber-cafés? Can people download it from your website? Or is it just lying on your hard disk or hidden away gathering dust in the corner of a library somewhere?

Once your dictionary is ready to share, you can upload it on your website to be viewed online or downloaded.

Lexique Pro is fairly easy to use and has some nice features, e.g. if your database includes references to image, sound or video files, these can be shown too.

I nearly forgot to tell you: Lexique Pro is freeware!

Find out more about

• other features of Lexique Pro
• some of the lexicons people are making available
• downloading Lexique Pro