Kafejo.com : Glosa Dictionaries (obsolete page)

Glosa Dictionaries (obsolete page)

I worked on development of the Glosa dictionaries from 1997 through 2000 but no longer maintain them. I've kept my stuff here for historical and reference purposes. The latest and greatest dictionaries, currently maintained by Marcel Springer, can be found at the Glosa Website. See my Glosa Page for Glosa info and links.

. . . . . . . . .

At this time they are for use only by members of the GLOSALIST; email me at nvynagb@arbfcyvpr.pbz for the password.

2000.08.07: It is no longer necessary for these files to be password protected, so I can now reveal the password... it was seleni. Marcel Springer has enhanced and webified the dictionaries, and provides Glosa information in German and English. Also on the Net there's a version of the Glosa 1000 for Chinese. And you can purchase the definitive print versions of Glosa dictionaries and other materials from the Glosa Education Organization.

You can download the dictionaries either as self-extracting zipfiles or as regular zipfiles. The self-extracting files run under DOS but the regular zipfiles can be used on any system that can run pkzip (or a port of Info-ZIP... and most can! It's freeware, and compatible with pkzip. I use it on DOS and HPUX).

The .exe files are self-extracting zipfiles. Simply run them.

The .zip files are regular zipfiles. Use your favorite unzipper on them.

The resulting textfiles are named FILE0001.TXT, FILE0002.TXT and so on. Each file is a single dictionary page. If you want doublesided hardcopy, just print all the odd-numbered files and then print the even-numbered files on their backsides.

These dictionaries are under construction, but usable in their current forms. Here are the issues currently being resolved...

Synonyms - English words mapped to more than one Glosa word. - 1998.03.30: Completed!

Omissions - English words mapped to fewer than one Glosa word. - 1999.01.26: Completed!

And some thoughts on agglutination.

Latest dictionary update: 14 August 2000. (Encryption removed; no other changes.)
GE6KBASE	This was my starting point: the Glosa 6000 dictionary, which Robin Gaskell scanned and saved to disk and mailed to me. One thing that disturbed me about this original was the large number of synonyms. And homonyms. Synonyms are fun, though I'm not sure they're such a good idea in an International Auxiliary Language. If you've learned one synonym, and I've learned another, an IAL loses some of its utility! (I have kept them in the Literary Dictionary.) I felt that the homonyms were the major problem. Glosa draws primarily on Latin and Greek for its vocabulary. It appears that as time passed, the Latin-derived words have acquired several Greek synonyms, and the Greek-derived words have acquired several Latin synonyms, so that someday we might have a dictionary that is merely the aggregate of the Greek and Latin dictionaries! Well, I exaggerate. But another effect of all those Greek/Latin synonyms is that inevitably some major homonymization (a word? it is now!) crept in, and that's definitely not a good idea in an IAL. Personally, I feel that Glosa would have been better off if the creators had settled on Greek or Latin, rather than drawing from both. Currently, there is no definitive and complete Glosa dictionary. So, if you bump into an unfamiliar Glosa word, you don't know whether it came from Greek or Latin, and if it's not in a handy Glosa dictionary, you'll have to guess its source. And because of the homonyms, you may find it in both. If you do, and you're lucky, the meanings will be similar; if not, you'll have to infer the meaning from the context. Writing is even more problematical; when writers need to coin a new word, some draw from Greek, some from Latin; thereby increasing the confusion, homonyms, and synonyms. And, after all, it's Glosa's grammar that makes it special, so it wouldn't really have mattered which lexikon the creators selected.
GES	So I took that original file and created my Glosa Sourcefile. And I folded in words from the various Glosa 1000s found on the Net, and other Glosa sources, and I used sort and uniq and grep and sed and awk (DOS versions; I use UNIX at work, but at home it's DOS or Windows) and other implements of destruction to find and report the Glosa words with more than one definition, and then I looked at those definitions to see if they were consistent (just synonyms) or completely different. Sometimes the problems were just typos, which was interesting because there were several cases in which the typo was itself a perfectly valid word - just not the right one. Sometimes they were caused by Greek and Latin words that were spelled the same but had completely different meanings. Using criteria that we've discussed on the GLOSALIST, I tried to resolve these issues. I'm also working on other aspects of the dictionary. For example, daynames are formed by counting. Beginning with Sunday, the days (di is day) are numbered 1, 2, 3... mo, bi, tri... giving di-mo, di-bi, di-tri... But some days also have their own special names - Monday is luna-di and Wednesday is merkuri-di - while the others have none. And then there are some words for which Glosa apparently has no word. For those who are interested in such things, here is source.zip, which contains the current version of this source from which the five dictionaries are generated.
GE zip or exe	The Glosa-English Dictionary. I wrote a procedure that reads the Glosa Sourcefile and creates this dictionary. It is formatted as described above, one file for each dictionary page.
EGL zip or exe	The English-Glosa Literary Dictionary. This is the GE inverted, and containing all the synonyms. (Compare with the EGB.) The first Glosa word in each definition is the preferred word. (Synonym selection has been completed.)
EGB zip or exe	This is the English-Glosa Basic Dictionary, created by removing the nonpreferred synonyms from the Literary Dictionary. For maximum clarity in international communications, only the words in this dictionary should be used. Of course, one could also use the Literary Dictionary, being careful to use only the preferred synonyms!
GEB zip or exe	This is the Glosa-English Basic Dictionary, an inversion of the English-Glosa Basic Dictionary.
EGC zip or exe	The English-Glosa Core Dictionary. This is created by removing all the words from the Basic Dictionary which are not also found in the Artificial Languages Base Vocabulary. This will be the starting point for students of Glosa, and contains the basic set of words that you really ought to know. For those who are interested in such things, core.zip contains the two files which are used to generate the EGC and the GEC dictionaries. These files contain the English-Glosa and Glosa-English wordpairs, one pair per line, without any page formatting or such.
GEC zip or exe	The Glosa-English Core Dictionary, the inverse of the EGC. For those who are interested in such things, core.zip contains the two files which are used to generate the EGC and the GEC dictionaries. These files contain the English-Glosa and Glosa-English wordpairs, one pair per line, without any page formatting or such.

Latest dictionary update: 14 August 2000. (Encryption removed; no other changes.)

GE6KBASE

This was my starting point: the Glosa 6000 dictionary, which Robin Gaskell scanned and saved to disk and mailed to me. One thing that disturbed me about this original was the large number of synonyms. And homonyms. Synonyms are fun, though I'm not sure they're such a good idea in an International Auxiliary Language. If you've learned one synonym, and I've learned another, an IAL loses some of its utility! (I have kept them in the Literary Dictionary.)

I felt that the homonyms were the major problem. Glosa draws primarily on Latin and Greek for its vocabulary. It appears that as time passed, the Latin-derived words have acquired several Greek synonyms, and the Greek-derived words have acquired several Latin synonyms, so that someday we might have a dictionary that is merely the aggregate of the Greek and Latin dictionaries! Well, I exaggerate. But another effect of all those Greek/Latin synonyms is that inevitably some major homonymization (a word? it is now!) crept in, and that's definitely not a good idea in an IAL.

Personally, I feel that Glosa would have been better off if the creators had settled on Greek or Latin, rather than drawing from both. Currently, there is no definitive and complete Glosa dictionary. So, if you bump into an unfamiliar Glosa word, you don't know whether it came from Greek or Latin, and if it's not in a handy Glosa dictionary, you'll have to guess its source. And because of the homonyms, you may find it in both. If you do, and you're lucky, the meanings will be similar; if not, you'll have to infer the meaning from the context. Writing is even more problematical; when writers need to coin a new word, some draw from Greek, some from Latin; thereby increasing the confusion, homonyms, and synonyms. And, after all, it's Glosa's grammar that makes it special, so it wouldn't really have mattered which lexikon the creators selected.

GES

So I took that original file and created my Glosa Sourcefile. And I folded in words from the various Glosa 1000s found on the Net, and other Glosa sources, and I used sort and uniq and grep and sed and awk (DOS versions; I use UNIX at work, but at home it's DOS or Windows) and other implements of destruction to find and report the Glosa words with more than one definition, and then I looked at those definitions to see if they were consistent (just synonyms) or completely different. Sometimes the problems were just typos, which was interesting because there were several cases in which the typo was itself a perfectly valid word - just not the right one. Sometimes they were caused by Greek and Latin words that were spelled the same but had completely different meanings. Using criteria that we've discussed on the GLOSALIST, I tried to resolve these issues.

I'm also working on other aspects of the dictionary. For example, daynames are formed by counting. Beginning with Sunday, the days (di is day) are numbered 1, 2, 3... mo, bi, tri... giving di-mo, di-bi, di-tri... But some days also have their own special names - Monday is luna-di and Wednesday is merkuri-di - while the others have none. And then there are some words for which Glosa apparently has no word.

For those who are interested in such things, here is source.zip, which contains the current version of this source from which the five dictionaries are generated.

GE
zip or exe

The Glosa-English Dictionary. I wrote a procedure that reads the Glosa Sourcefile and creates this dictionary. It is formatted as described above, one file for each dictionary page.

EGL
zip or exe

The English-Glosa Literary Dictionary. This is the GE inverted, and containing all the synonyms. (Compare with the EGB.) The first Glosa word in each definition is the preferred word. (Synonym selection has been completed.)

EGB
zip or exe

This is the English-Glosa Basic Dictionary, created by removing the nonpreferred synonyms from the Literary Dictionary. For maximum clarity in international communications, only the words in this dictionary should be used. Of course, one could also use the Literary Dictionary, being careful to use only the preferred synonyms!

GEB
zip or exe

This is the Glosa-English Basic Dictionary, an inversion of the English-Glosa Basic Dictionary.

EGC
zip or exe

The English-Glosa Core Dictionary. This is created by removing all the words from the Basic Dictionary which are not also found in the Artificial Languages Base Vocabulary. This will be the starting point for students of Glosa, and contains the basic set of words that you really ought to know.

For those who are interested in such things, core.zip contains the two files which are used to generate the EGC and the GEC dictionaries. These files contain the English-Glosa and Glosa-English wordpairs, one pair per line, without any page formatting or such.

GEC
zip or exe

The Glosa-English Core Dictionary, the inverse of the EGC.

1998-03-30 gene krea, 2003-09-26 gene muta.