Is putting the national language as the vernacular acceptable in creating a national–minority bilingual dictionary?

[Cường]

I'm currently working on a dictionary where the national language is the vernacular and the language of the parts of speech, while the three minority languages (considered to be dialects of the same language, despite some mutual unintelligibility) are the analysis language. Is this desirable?

I was thinking of doing this the "traditional" way, with the three minority languages to be the vernacular and the national language being the analysis language and using reversal indexes to create the national–minority language dictionary. However, looking back on it I feel like this is unideal since the three languages aren't necessarily equivalent.

[Kevin Warfel]

Since the intended result is a dictionary with headwords in the national language and glosses, definitions, etc. in the three minority languages, it seems entirely appropriate to set up your project with the national language as the "vernacular writing system" and the three minority languages as the "analysis writing systems". The labels in FLEx reflect the majority application of the software but there is nothing inappropriate IMO to using them as you are.

FWIW,

Kevin

On Sat, Jun 28, 2025 at 6:10 AM Cường <vokp...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm currently working on a dictionary where the national language is the vernacular and the language of the parts of speech, while the three minority languages (considered to be dialects of the same language, despite some mutual unintelligibility) are the analysis language. Is this desirable?

I was thinking of doing this the "traditional" way, with the three minority languages to be the vernacular and the national language being the analysis language and using reversal indexes to create the national–minority language dictionary. However, looking back on it I feel like this is unideal since the three languages aren't necessarily equivalent.

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[Beth-docs Bryson]

I agree with Kevin.

A better label than "vernacular" might be:  "the language being studied".

And for "analysis":  "the language used for explanations/descriptions".

If someone is doing a monolingual dictionary, then they just set both vernacular and analysis to the same language.

It ultimately comes down to what is practical.  I think your proposal is a good one, given the goals and the nature of the relationships.

One thing to keep in mind:  Normally the parts of speech are in one of the analysis languages, not the vernacular.  So you will want to also add the national language as one of the analysis languages.  And you will want to do some customizing so that the POS shows up only in that language, and all the other analysis fields (especially Gloss/Definition) show up in the other ones.  There are various places you can set those things:

 - The main way to affect which WSs (writing systems) show up as fields in the user interface is via Format / Set Up Analysis Writing Systems.  And keep in mind that if you untick a box there, it means "hide this field if it is empty".  If it has contents, it will still show.  I recommend unchecking the National language here, unless you also want to put definitions in the national language.

 - For the UI, you can configure each field for which WSs show via the little blue triangle to the left of the field.  You could use this to adjust the Category field to only show the national language.  I believe this would override the checkbox in "Set Up Writing Systems", and this would allow you to show this field for the national language, even if it is unticked in Set Up Writing Systems.

 - To control what shows in the dictionary preview, you would use Tools / Configure Dictionary.  For each field you can say which WSs show and in what order.  For the dictionary preview, this is independent of what is showing in the UI.

Hope that helps.

-Beth

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[Andreas_Joswig]

To put in perspective what Beth wrote here: although often the parts of speech are in one of the analysis languages, there is no law about that. If the intended users of the dictionary are speakers of the vernacular language(s), then it is not only okay, but actually appropriate to have the parts of speech and all other meta-language information in the vernacular. But this requires that the necessary terminology is developed for the vernacular language(s).

And yes, a better term could be chosen for the current "vernacular language" of FLEx. I would suggest "headword language".

Andreas

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[John Vanderelst]

Hello!

I am busy doing some interlinearization.

I would like FLEX to be a bit more precise in displaying the analysis. At the moment I have this:

- oy is the completive form coming from aw. It is as a Variant in the Lexicon.

My question: is there a way to change settings so that FLEX shows me in the interlinearization what kind of variant it is?

I would like to see this:

oy

aw2

completive

tuer

v

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Thanks

John

[Andreas_Joswig]

Hi John,

If you define a variant type "completive" under the "irregularly inflected forms" and fill the "Append to gloss" field, things should work out for you. I did this for the past variant below:

With this setup, the variant type is shown as an appended gloss in the interlinear view.

Let me know if you run into trouble with this, or need more information!

Warm greetings (especially warm today),

Andreas

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