Online Nederlandse woordenboeken
De De Geïntegreerde Taal-Bank (van het Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie - wat ressorteert onder de Taalunie) heeft vier complete historische Nederlandse woordenboeken online geplaatst.
- Oudnederlands Woordenboek (tot ca. 1150/1200)
- Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek
- Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek (ca. 1250 tot 1550)
- Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (tot 1976-heden?)
In tegenstelling tot sommige andere werken (bijvoorbeeld het Etymologisch woordenboek van het Nederlands[1]) is de toegang tot deze woordenboeken momenteel geheel gratis. Wel is registratie noodzakelijk (een kort en snel formulier) en accoord met een redelijk enge eindgebruikersovereenkomst (alles is zo’n beetje verboden, je hoeft nog net je hersenen niet te laten wissen na kennisname van een lemma).
Het Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal (WNT) kan fungeren als regulier Nederlands woordenboek. Als ik het goed begrijp is het in eerste instantie aangevuld met moderne woorden tot 1976, maar wordt het ook nu nog verder aangevuld (woorden als ‘beeldscherm’, ‘computer’, ‘digitaal’ lijken bijvoorbeeld te zijn toegevoegd in 2001, maar woorden als ‘internet’ of ‘digibeet’ zijn nog niet opgenomen). Het WNT heeft een wikipedia pagina.
Toegang tot de woordenboeken is via een flash applicatie, dus een flash plugin is een vereiste. De applicatie start op in een nieuw venster zonder navigatie. Het resultaat van een zoekopdracht wordt opnieuw in een nieuw venster of nieuwe tab van een eerder geopend venster geladen en bestaat uit aanklikbare HTML pagina’s (versie 1.2.3, 11-12-2009).
Beschrijvingen van de woordenboeken zijn verborgen in de flash applicatie onder ‘Help&Info’). Van het Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek is er tevens een inleidend pdf en evenzo is er een inleidend pdf van het Oudnederlands Woordenboek beschikbaar.
1. Hoewel het project Etymologisch woordenboek van het Nederlands sinds 2005 is ondergebracht bij het Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie (INL) te Leiden (wat via de Taalunie wordt gefinancierd door Nederland en België) is de online publicatie ervan om een of andere reden toegekend aan de Amsterdam University Press. Deze vraagt voor het raadplegen van het Etymologisch woordenboek al jaren 40 euro per jaar. 40 euro per jaar voor alleen het Etymologisch woordenboek? Aangenomen dat er per se geld verdiend moet worden aan zo’n woordenboek zou een betere optie zijn geweest: beperk het aantal lemma’s dat iemand zonder een licentie kan raadplegen. Buiten instellingen is stellig niemand zo gek om 40 euro per jaar te betalen om af en toe een woord op te kunnen zoeken (academici doen dat via hun universiteit natuurlijk) dus zou zo’n beperking maar weinig inkomstenderving betekenen terwijl het een fraaie service zou bieden aan het publiek.
The limit of Google’s vocabulary
Reading 森鴎外 Mori Ōgai I’m getting used to finding words and phrases that are almost or even entirely unique to Mori’s oeuvre. It turns out that Google doesn’t understand Mori either. When I wanted to know how frequent the use of 威福 was outside of Mori, I looked for 威福 -辞典 -辞書 -森 -鴎外 and was surprised to see that I still got 62,100 hits. Not so. Google currently doesn’t seem to know that 威福 is actually a word and pulls the characters apart. When I looked for "威福" -辞典 -辞書 -森 -鴎外 (with quotes around 威福) I got only 370 hits, again underlining Mori’s unusual choice of words. According to Google only about 99 pages used 威福 without being a dictionary or a reference to Mori (most are historical texts).
Normally even cryptic and uncommon words get around 50,000 hits in Japanese. Only really obscure, archaic and obsolete expressions plummet down to about 500 hits (not counting dictionaries). Archaic words like 紅毛船 or 胤裔 get about 500 hits. However, while 威福 as an expression seems unused, its basic meaning can hardly be missed, since the separate characters are very much in use. 威 is suggestive of 威力 (‘power’) or 威圧 (‘coercion’) and 福 can only mean ‘wealth’. And in combination with 擅にする (‘act selfishly’) - as Mori uses it - its implied meaning of ‘using one’s power or wealth to make people do one’s wishes’ is easily guessed as well.
About recent Japanese-Dutch Dictionaries
For some time now both the universities of Leiden (the Netherlands) and Leuven (Belgium) have been working on a new Japanese-Dutch dictionary. Both projects have gone through different stages. For some years now, the Leuven project has been using MediaWiki and what looks like a combination of unrestricted user participation and an editorial process. As of June 2009 the dictionary is well beyond 30,000 items - reaching the size of the last published Japanese-Dutch dictionary (Van de Stadt, [1925] 1934).
Part of the dictionary has been converted for use at WWWJdic and is available through its interface as well, but the projects home page seems to be the more obvious place to look, considering it will always be more up to date. Recently the Leuven project has moved its site to the address [www.]japansnederlandswoordenboek.org.
As far as I know the project of the university of Leiden used until one or two years ago only a small staff of editors. Last year apparently the decision has been made to employ more contributors (payed per item, supervised by an editor and an executive editor) and introduce a new system to create and edit items. The project's stated ambition is to build a dictionary of 90,000 items. As of the beginning of 2009 the project was still looking for sponsors and was the part of the dictionary that has been completed not online. In 2008 the address of the project moved to [www.]japansnederlandswoordenboek.nl.
I don't know how it came about that the projects of Leuven and Leiden moved to addresses that are so similar.
It seems neither project seems to consider options to streamline searches in its databases that want to search Dutch->Japanese. Just like WWWJDic currently does for English->Japanese, the Leuven Japanese-Dutch dictionary allows Dutch->Japanese, but gives a random list of full-text hits as a result. This is perhaps something to think about, considering that currently more people look for Dutch->Japanese¹ than the other way around and that the paper dictionary Dutch-Japanese by Kodansha is aimed at the Japanese student and seems to be somewhat less reliable.² ³
1. At least according to my logs at www.jiten.nl.
2. My personal impression - reinforced by the opinion of a NSoJ that I showed it to and reviews online.
3. Fun tip for searching for Japanese-Dutch (and Dutch-Japanese) equivalents of words: you can search the separate digital dictionaries that are already online (and configured properly) directly from Google by prefixing the word you are looking for with japans nederlands woordenboek word » Here are examples with ‘meneer’ and ‘yamato’.
鑫滿行 TOKO XINVOL
Being able to read regular Japanese doesn't necessarily mean you can read Chinese as well. For one thing: regular Chinese uses a lot of characters you are not likely to see in everyday Japanese. Secondly and perhaps more importantly: you need to know Chinese words (and grammar). But the name of this Chinese store in my neighborhood was interesting beyond containing unkown characters and words.
First of all, I really liked the way the characters where shaped - even though I had to look three times at the first character before I realised I was looking at three times 金, constituting 鑫.
However, the other thing that intrigued me was the way the Chinese name of the store had been rendered in Latin. The Latin name of the shop was TOKO XINVOL and especially the part ‘VOL’ attracted my attention, because ‘vol’ really doesn't fit the phonology of Chinese in any transcription that I know of. However, when I take ‘vol’ as a Dutch word, it captures the meaning of the second character in the Chinese name 滿 (‘vol’ is English ‘full’). But to attach that directly to obviously Chinese ‘xin’ - I had never seen that before.
Actually the store's name TOKO XINVOL as a whole is a mix of three languages: Malay, Chinese and Dutch: The word TOKO is originally Malay and is used in Dutch to indicate an Indonesian or Chinese store that carries food products. XIN is a transcription of 鑫, a word that is used exclusively in names but has the happy connotation of prosperity (鑫 consists of three times 金 - also a character on its own, for the word jīn, ‘gold; metal; money, wealth’).[1] VOL is Dutch and apparently used as the equivalent for 滿 mǎn (its main meaning being ‘full’). Finallly the character 行 háng designates a firm or a shop.[2]
While I'm not really certain what the owner of this store was thinking when he came up with this surprising TOKO XINVOL for 鑫滿行 I like it.[3]