Jim Breen wrote:
[I missed this earlier posting]
>Jack & Naree wrote:
>
>
>>An American-English dictionary, and a (Commonwealth) English
>>Dictionary then.
>>Otherwise, it has to be all listed as seperate entries.
>>
>>
Um. What about words that are spelled differently within and
between Commonwealth countries? Or words like accoutrement/accouterment
which are spelled differently within the US?
Of course they shouldn't be separate entries, but Gerard's
database design seems to be dicating that one.
The fact that words are spelled differently needs to be addressed in one
way or the other. Even in old style wiktionary there needs to be
something both at the accoutrement and the accouterment article in order
to make them "findable". The English Wiktionary nowadays frowns on the
use of redirects so it is more substantial than that.
In itself there is no value added to the fact that it has its own record
in the tables Expression and Word. The words can be connected through
SynTrans to the same meaning. They can be related through Relation to
say that they are alternative ways of spelling.
Consequently, there is nothing special in having both accoutrement and
accouterment exist within the database. The thing that is relevant is
that they are both shown to the user of the dictionary who looks up
either Expression. When they are alternate spellings within the same
Language, they will be seen as such. So as far as I am concerned, this
seems to me to be much ado about nothing.
>>Frankly
I favour the first option, because to non-American-English
>>speakers, the American spellings are simply misspellings.
>>
>>
Well that's news to this non-American-English speaker 8-)} I
don't regard them as "misspellings" at all. Just different.
I would regard all accepted words as Expressions. In order to know more
about an expression, you have to add more information to enrich the
experience. It will be for instance be possible to date the first
accepted use of the later spelling. The etymology is also different.
Then again, this may not be of interest to you but it is there for those
who find it of interest.
Thanks,
GerardM