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Lexicon management?
Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2023 10:09 am
by Jonlang
I'm about to re-build my conlangs lexicons. The three languages are all related and share etymologies. So what I need is a means of having all three terms be searchable, with the English translations, their cognates and original proto-form. I have an old app called iDatabase but it's pretty poor. I've not really used spreadsheets or databases since around 2003 so I'm not that up to speed with them, other than simple formulae in Excel. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2023 11:52 am
by Man in Space
Let’s start with your preferred formatting for this information. What does a useful dummy entry look like for you?
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2023 11:58 am
by Jonlang
Man in Space wrote: ↑Wed Jul 12, 2023 11:52 am
Let’s start with your preferred formatting for this information. What does a useful dummy entry look like for you?
Something like 7 columns: Proto | Lang 1 | Lang 2 | Lang 3 | Root | English | Notes – which can sort alphabetically by column. I don't really need a search function, I can just scroll to find what I need in whichever language. I'm getting to a point where I can pretty much know what a cognate should be now but sometimes there are surprises.
I don't have Excel but I do have macOS Numbers which should be able to do this, right?
Unless anyone has a better tool they have for this sort of thing, or know of any useful templates out there?
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2023 12:01 pm
by Man in Space
I just use GDocs.
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2023 4:22 am
by bradrn
I like using
SIL Toolbox for my languages. It’s pretty flexible, and can do a lot. Plus the underlying format is plain-text, so if you need anything extra you’re not restricted to what the software gives you.
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2023 5:47 am
by Emily
yeah i also just use a spreadsheet. (currently stuck using libreoffice until i get around to pirating excel on the new computer.) generally i keep a separate spreadsheet for different languages, but my current modern gothic project has multiple stages of the language so i'm trying to keep track of one etymon per row. i have different tabs for different parts of speech (below is a screenshot from my nouns tab) but that might be overly nitpicky on my part. i have conditional formatting graying the gloss if it matches the gloss from the previous stage (ph1 = phase 1 = "middle gothic", ph2 = "early modern gothic", ph3 = "modern gothic"), and highlighting certain cells in pink if there are duplicates (e.g. ph1 /gwás/ is the lemma for both "cow" and "speech, address")
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2023 5:03 am
by WeepingElf
Relevant.
Indeed, I follow this advice and keep my conlangs in simple hand-coded HTML files - thereby also not needing any conversion when I am going to put them on my web site.
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2023 5:30 am
by bradrn
WeepingElf wrote: ↑Mon Jul 17, 2023 5:03 am
Relevant.
Indeed, I follow this advice and keep my conlangs in simple hand-coded HTML files - thereby also not needing any conversion when I am going to put them on my web site.
This is why I use SIL Toolbox — its native format is MDF, which is plain text (somewhat reminiscent of LaTeX, but a lot simpler). Indeed, it’s trivial to edit the dictionary without using Toolbox. The software just provides a convenient way to manage that plain-text dictionary.
(For a sample, I recently uploaded the MDF-format dictionary for my reconstruction relay language:
http://bradrn.com/files/akana-2023-rela ... ionary.mdf)
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2023 6:25 am
by chris_notts
bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Jul 17, 2023 5:30 am
WeepingElf wrote: ↑Mon Jul 17, 2023 5:03 am
Relevant.
Indeed, I follow this advice and keep my conlangs in simple hand-coded HTML files - thereby also not needing any conversion when I am going to put them on my web site.
This is why I use SIL Toolbox — its native format is MDF, which is plain text (somewhat reminiscent of LaTeX, but a lot simpler). Indeed, it’s trivial to edit the dictionary without using Toolbox. The software just provides a convenient way to manage that plain-text dictionary.
(For a sample, I recently uploaded the MDF-format dictionary for my reconstruction relay language:
http://bradrn.com/files/akana-2023-rela ... ionary.mdf)
I tried it in the past, but I find the interface a bit clunky and painful. My own approach now is often a mix of spreadsheets and Python code that does some analysis (phoneme frequencies by position, closest word, ...).
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2023 7:00 am
by bradrn
chris_notts wrote: ↑Mon Jul 17, 2023 6:25 am
bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Jul 17, 2023 5:30 am
WeepingElf wrote: ↑Mon Jul 17, 2023 5:03 am
Relevant.
Indeed, I follow this advice and keep my conlangs in simple hand-coded HTML files - thereby also not needing any conversion when I am going to put them on my web site.
This is why I use SIL Toolbox — its native format is MDF, which is plain text (somewhat reminiscent of LaTeX, but a lot simpler). Indeed, it’s trivial to edit the dictionary without using Toolbox. The software just provides a convenient way to manage that plain-text dictionary.
(For a sample, I recently uploaded the MDF-format dictionary for my reconstruction relay language:
http://bradrn.com/files/akana-2023-rela ... ionary.mdf)
I tried it in the past, but I find the interface a bit clunky and painful.
You’re not wrong! But I find that for my purposes, it works well enough. And being plain text makes up for a lot, since it’s so easy to process via other means.
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2023 1:54 am
by chris_notts
bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Jul 17, 2023 7:00 am
You’re not wrong! But I find that for my purposes, it works well enough. And being plain text makes up for a lot, since it’s so easy to process via other means.
So are spreadsheets though! You can manually export to CSV, but I just use pandas.read_excel in my Python code to read in the summary table so I can calculate the stats and transform into a LaTeX dictionary.
I guess it's the programmer urge to just hack your own thing together whenever the out of the box solutions don't quite do what you want.
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2023 6:08 am
by bradrn
chris_notts wrote: ↑Tue Jul 18, 2023 1:54 am
bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Jul 17, 2023 7:00 am
You’re not wrong! But I find that for my purposes, it works well enough. And being plain text makes up for a lot, since it’s so easy to process via other means.
So are spreadsheets though! You can manually export to CSV, but I just use pandas.read_excel in my Python code to read in the summary table so I can calculate the stats and transform into a LaTeX dictionary.
I guess it's the programmer urge to just hack your own thing together whenever the out of the box solutions don't quite do what you want.
What I dislike about spreadsheets is that everything is stuck in the grid of single cells. So if I, say, want to write a definition longer than a single line, that becomes difficult. It gets even more difficult if I want to give words more than one sense, add explanatory comments, specify paradigms, or in general do anything which doesn’t fit into a grid neatly. Plain-text formats like MDF solve all these problems quite simply.
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2023 8:47 am
by tlacamazatl
Emily wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 5:47 am
yeah i also just use a spreadsheet. (currently stuck using libreoffice until i get around to pirating excel on the new computer.) generally i keep a separate spreadsheet for different languages, but my current modern gothic project has multiple stages of the language so i'm trying to keep track of one etymon per row. i have different tabs for different parts of speech (below is a screenshot from my nouns tab) but that might be overly nitpicky on my part. i have conditional formatting graying the gloss if it matches the gloss from the previous stage (ph1 = phase 1 = "middle gothic", ph2 = "early modern gothic", ph3 = "modern gothic"), and highlighting certain cells in pink if there are duplicates (e.g. ph1 /gwás/ is the lemma for both "cow" and "speech, address")
I use a similar technique. It's most helpful for sorting, finding, and editing. I then copy over (with copious editing) to my word doc (when there are changes) which I republish every month or so as the latest version of my grammar.
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2023 1:37 pm
by KamareKitsune
Probably the main reason I'm still using spreadsheets is that I highly prioritise being able to filter, not just search. And speaking of search, being able to search in just the translations is rather nice, especially if you have a prose discussion as well.
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2023 3:04 am
by hwhatting
KathTheDragon wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 1:37 pm
Probably the main reason I'm still using spreadsheets is that I highly prioritise being able to
filter, not just search. And speaking of search, being able to search in just the translations is rather nice, especially if you have a prose discussion as well.
Same for me. I use Excel a lot in my day job anyway, so it's a software I feel at home with.
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2023 11:15 am
by xxx
in 3SDeductiveLanguage(1Sense=1Sign=1Sound),
I only have a hundred or so semantic primes...
it all fits on a credit-card sized document,
that contains the second equality (1Sign=1Sound) in my wallet...
lexicons are forbidden to avoid approximations,
whereas each agglomeration of primes is its own definition...
as well as texts storage to avoid repeating previous compositions,
rather than (re)finding them when necessary...
everything is memorized,
including the morphological system
logic prevails,
so that on-the-fly composition is possible...
so except my memory card for remembering the sound of the least-used idiograms,
everything is just stored in my brain...
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 10:47 am
by WeepingElf
KathTheDragon wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 1:37 pm
Probably the main reason I'm still using spreadsheets is that I highly prioritise being able to
filter, not just search. And speaking of search, being able to search in just the translations is rather nice, especially if you have a prose discussion as well.
Nice semantic extension of the English word
prose: 'text not in verse' > 'text outside lists or tables'.
Re: Lexicon management?
Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2023 10:04 am
by KamareKitsune
WeepingElf wrote: ↑Fri Jul 21, 2023 10:47 am
KathTheDragon wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 1:37 pm
Probably the main reason I'm still using spreadsheets is that I highly prioritise being able to
filter, not just search. And speaking of search, being able to search in just the translations is rather nice, especially if you have a prose discussion as well.
Nice semantic extension of the English word
prose: 'text not in verse' > 'text outside lists or tables'.
Honestly, that's not something I've ever considered before! I've just thought of it as "normal running text", and so lists and tables don't count, since they're not running text.