ONLINE dictionaries may have hit the sales of printed ones in the past few years but their advent, along with Personal Digital Assistant dictionaries, have made the role of a lexicographer more challenging and interesting, according to Peter A Sokolowski.
Peter, a lexicographer, was in town to popularise Webster dictionary in coordination with the Consulate General of the United States of America.
Editor at Large of the popular American Webster dictionary Sokolowski, in a tete-a-tete with Expresso, dwelt at length on the art of lexicography and the idiosyncrasies and anecdotes of contemporary American English.
Compilation of Webster dictionary is a business as well as a cultural project, he declared. “The coming of Webster dictionary is one of the crucial events in the spirit of American nationalism. It is unique in defining the words in an American way as opposed to the colonial ruler’s language,’’ he said tracing the historic foundations of the dictionary.
The American way of spellings based on pronunciation was a liberating exercise, started by Noah Webster way back in 1806. “So, if you wonder how organise became organize, colour color, telephone telefon and centre center, the credit for initiating the exercise of democratising the language should go to him,’’ he explained.
The Webster way of compilation did not confine itself to pronunciation but also gave importance to the local nuances and American etymology (study of sources and development of words).
As one carrying on the Webster legacy, he said the role of a lexicographer was not to coin or formulate words. “Our role is to trace the career of the word in that particular language and to report in an objective manner.’’ A word would find its way into the dictionary after its importance was assessed from the reader’s point of view - how often he or she comes across it or uses it.
On the changing role of the lexicographer, he said now they placed words with most hits in a week or day in their website -- www.merriamwebster.
com. “This exercise is very appealing for language learners as most of the words are searched online based on their usage. Take the case of the death of Michael Jackson. The maximum searches during that time were `emaciated,’ `stricken,’ `icon’ and RIP. These were the keywords in tracking the career of the pop star,’’ he explained.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary is the best selling hardcover book in American history and other versions like learners and collegiate are also popular.
“We are focusing on the parallel online versions of these dictionaries which get around one billion hits per day. There is a huge revenue in the online versions, which is compensating the decrease in sales of the paperback and hardback,’’ he claimed.
They are involved in active collaborations with newspapers and magazine websites to receive more hits for search words.
bhargav@expressbuzz.com