Home  /  Lexikos  /  Núm: Vol30 Par: 0 (2020)  /  Article
ARTICLE
TITLE

Sethantšo sa Sesotho and Sesuto–English Dictionary: A Comparative Analysis of their Designs and Entries

SUMMARY

This article seeks to establish the relationship and extent of similarity between two Sesotho dictionaries, published in the 1800s and 2005 respectively. The two dictionaries under discussion are the Sesuto–English Dictionary by Mabille and Dieterlen and Sethantšo sa Sesotho by Hlalele. The former dictionary, like most dictionaries of other African languages pioneered by the missionaries, is bilingual. The latter dictionary is the first monolingual dictionary for Sesotho and it was compiled by a mother tongue-speaker of the language. The closeness of the content of the two dictionaries is established by applying the user-perspective approach as the framework of analysis. Through an analysis of the designs and entries in the two dictionaries, the study discovers similarities and differences in terms of the use of non-standard symbols and atypical sound patterning, illustrative phrases/sentences and obsolete or archaic words. Given the amount of obsolete items in Sethantšo sa Sesotho, one of the recommendations emanating from this study is that Sethantšo sa Sesotho be revised or that a new monolingual dictionary be produced which will include more modern words that will meet the needs of contemporary users.

 Articles related

Awadh Awadh,Ansarullah Shafiullah Khan    

This study aims at investigating the challenges that Yemeni translation students encounter when translating neologisms from English into Arabic. It also aims at comparing students' translation with outcomes of machine translation (MT). The authors follow... see more


Takashi Sakurai,Ernst F. Kotzé    

<b>A Contrasting View on Bilingual Dictionaries in South Africa and Japan</b>Both dictionaries that combine Afrikaans and African languages and dictionaries that combine Japanese and Western languages incorporate unrelated languages. In this ... see more

Revista: Lexikos

Marjeta Vrbinc,Alenka Vrbinc    

This article deals with the inclusion and treatment of scientific and technical vocabu­lary in the third, fourth and eighth editions of Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. The comparison of these editions is based on a random sample of 50 pages from OA... see more

Revista: Lexikos

Lena Rogström    

The 18th century was important for Swedish linguistic development. Foreign lexical influence and orthographical standardization were intensely discussed, and the vocabulary was codified in several dictionaries, all bilingual. In this article, two questio... see more

Revista: Lexikos

Pawel Sickinger    

This paper introduces my concept of cognitive equivalence (cf. Mandelblit, 1997), an attempt to reconcile elements of Nida’s dynamic equivalence with recent innovations in cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, and building on the current focus ... see more