An open research consultation
The Italian and Spanish dictionaries are published in beta, which means they are searchable, sourced, and honest about being unfinished. They are also, deliberately, not ours to finish. This page says who we are looking for, what the standard is, and when the beta mark comes off.
Why a consultation
Ethnolects grew out of a Greek project, led by a Greek Australian who grew up in Thessaloniki. That background is a qualification for the Greek dictionary and a limit for the other two. We can read the Italian and Spanish scholarship and build the method and the site, but we cannot hear an Italian Australian grandmother's word the way her grandchildren can, and we should not be the ones deciding what it means. So the Italian and Spanish dictionaries open as consultations with their communities and with the linguists who study them, and the editorial decisions in each pass to people from that community as they come forward.
Who we are looking for
Community editors
One or two people for each language who grew up in the language and will read every entry, settle spellings and meanings, and put their name to the dictionary when it leaves beta. Time: a few hours a month. Credited as editors.
Academic advisers
Linguists, historians or sociologists of migration who know the literature, will check our reading of it, and will tell us when we are wrong. Credited on the Research page and in every citation of the dictionary.
Contributors
Anyone who heard these words at home, at work, at church or at the club. You send a word, a meaning, a place and a decade. If it is published, your name goes on it.
What beta means in practice
- Every entry is visible, and every page carries the beta mark.
- Entries from research sources are published as the source printed them. Where we have not yet seen the original page, the entry says so.
- Community words go through the same editorial check as in To Booko. During the beta, one credible witness with a place and a decade is enough to publish a word marked as needing confirmation; a second witness removes the mark.
- Nothing is deleted during the beta without a reason given. A word that turns out to be wrong is corrected on the entry or withdrawn, and the reason is recorded.
- Community meetings and recordings will follow a written consent form; nothing recorded will be published without it.
When the beta closes
The mark comes off a dictionary when three things are true: the research list on the Research page has been read in the original; at least one community editor and one academic adviser have read the whole dictionary and put their names to it; and the open questions raised during the consultation have each been answered or recorded as open. Until then it is a beta, and it says so.
Naming the dictionaries
To Booko took its name from a word: το μπούκο, the book, recorded among Greek Australians in Cairns by Angeliki Alvanoudi. The Italian and Spanish dictionaries will be named the same way, by the people who speak them. On each dictionary you can vote for a name on the shortlist or put forward your own. The community editors and advisers make the final choice from what is proposed and how people voted.
Take part
To propose a name or send a word, go to The Italglish Project or The Spanglish Project. To put yourself forward as an editor, adviser or host for a word night at your club, parish, radio program or association, use the form below. For anything else, write to hello@justgold.net.