Why I like some dictionaries more than others

[Lionel Mandrake]

Last edited Sun Nov 16, 2014, 04:44 PM - Edit history (1)

I am the proud owner of what will probably be the last print edition of the granddaddy of all English dictionaries, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Among its other virtues, when describing etymology it does not transliterate Greek words. It prints them using the Greek alphabet. The same is true of Cassell's Latin dictionary and the monumental Oxford Latin Dictionary.

Transliteration made some sense in the era of typewriters and hot-metal typesetting, but those technological dinosaurs are nearly extinct. Almost all printing is now done by computer. Since Greek fonts are widely available, there is no excuse for new dictionaries not to print Greek words in the Greek alphabet.

Many dictionaries now in print are photographic reproductions of older editions, so transliteration can not be replaced by Greek text.

Last time I checked the online OED it had not evolved much from the print edition. The Greek alphabet was used where appropriate, but unfortunately no Greek font was used. Instead, each Greek letter was a Graphics box, which means that those of us with bad eyesight could not zoom in on Greek words the way we could on English words.

Another criterion for dictionaries is the way they describe pronunciation. The gold standard for pronunciation is the alphabet of the International Phonetic Association (IPA). The best dictionaries (e.g., the OED) use the IPA alphabet, at least as a starting point.