Borrowing notations

[Hugh Paterson]

Greetings, 

what is the recomended practice for noting borrowed words and the source language for these words in FLEx?

all the best,
- Hugh Paterson III

[Ron Moe]

One of the recent version releases (I believe it was version 8) greatly improved the etymology section. So we now have a full set of fields that allow us to do almost everything we could have wished for. To produce the following entry, follow the steps below.

etymology n. The origin and historical development of a word. [from Greek etumologiā]

Click to the left of the Etymology field and click the little blue down arrow. Select "Insert Etymology". (Or right-click on the line and select "Insert Etymology".)

In the "Preceding Annotation" field type "from" (or any other string such as "possibly from" if you are unsure of the etymology).

In the "Source Language" field select the name of the language, such as "Greek". (You will first need to add "Greek" to your list of languages, which is maintained in the Lists area.)

In the "Source Form" field type the form of the (Greek) word: "etymologiā".

If you want something more complicated, you can add additional "Etymologies" as follows:

etymology n. The origin and historical development of a word. [from Latin etymologia, from Greek etumologiā, a compound of etumos 'true' + logos 'word, speech']

Click to the left of the Etymology field and click the little blue down arrow. Select "Insert Etymology". (Or right-click on the line and select "Insert Etymology".)

Preceding Annotation: from

Source Language: (select) Latin

Source Form: etymologia

In the "Etymology" line click "Insert Etymology" to insert another set of fields. Fill in any that are needed:

Preceding Annotation: from

Source Language: (select) Greek

Source Form: etumologiā

Click "Insert Etymology" again.

Preceding Annotation: a compound of

Source Form: etumos

Gloss: true

Click "Insert Etymology" again.

Preceding Annotation: +

Source Form: logos

Gloss: word, speech

You can add as many "Etymologies" as needed to describe stages in the word's history or an alternative analysis or anything else you might need. There is no real difference in describing inherited words and borrowed words using this system. The system allows you to describe a combination of historical stages and successive borrowings from language to language. So the system is very flexible and powerful. I just finished updating and correcting the etymological information in my dictionary. There was almost nothing that I wanted to do that FLEx couldn't handle.

If you are describing the etymology of an inherited word, use the "Source Language" field for earlier stages of your language (e.g. Old English, Germanic, PIE). You will have to enter each one in the list of languages.

You will need to use "Tools--Configure Dictionary" to add punctuation and styles (such as italics) to each field.

If you want to find all the words in your language that are borrowed, simply sort on the "Source Language" field.

Ron Moe

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