Alphabetic add-ons and a not-yet-existent Māori dictionary
Just updated my interest list, and noticed that LJ alphabetizes ā after the non-macroned vowels, and presumably after the rest of the alphabet. Must think up some interests with æ, ç, ð, µ, ñ, ø, ß or þ in them. Ælfric, Óðinn, Þórr... Old English glossaries alphabetize æ as ae, and put þ and ð together as one letter after t. Icelandic ones alphabetize ð with or after d, þ after z, and æ after þ.
Needed desperately: a new comprehensive, analytical Māori-English, English-Māori dictionary.
Nothing since the last edition of Williams has come up to its measure for scholarship and scientific lexicology. It is still the best Māori-English dictionary, but is in serious need of updating. It should form the basis of any future project. Updating would involve recording new uses of old words; new words and compounds; borrowed words; indigenous neologisms replacing older borrowed terms, and so on. The same careful analysis of distinctions of meaning that categorizes Williams should apply to the new work, in both the M-E and the E-M section.
There is no scientific general English-Māori dictionary on the market. The works by P.M. Ryan (two-way) and H.M. Ngata (E-M only), the most popular ones among students I know, are useful vocabulary lists, and Ryan's is quite comprehensive, but their approach is not scientific. Ryan often draws distinctions between highly disparate meanings of English words, but he does not always do so, and the student sometimes has to look up a word in the English-Māori section, then flip back to the Māori-English section to see which Māori word carries the meaning he is looking for. He is also haphazard in showing vowel length, often omitting macrons, especially in the M-E section. These can generally be checked in the E-M section, but this should not be necessary.
Ngata's English-Māori dictionary is useful, but often gives only the most typical meanings of English words. He frequently uses illustrative sentences where none is needed, and misses common idiomatic uses of English words which are not covered by the usual Māori equivalent. Ngata is from Ngāti Porou and generally gives East Coast forms-rātau, tātau, mātau for rātou, tātou, mātou.
Ideally, the dictionary should function equally well for native speakers of both languages. Where the speakers of two different languages live in different countries, it is not unreasonable to publish dictionaries targeted at the speakers of only one of the languages. A comprehensive two-way Russian dictionary written for English speakers should give a full range of Russian equivalents for a given English word, but need not be so meticulous in giving the English equivalents of Russian words. Highly irregular Russian verb forms should be given in their alphabetical place, but the same need not be done for English verbs. A dictionary for both Russian and English speakers needs to cater equally for both.
The same is true of a dictionary for Māori and English speakers. There is nothing wrong with having a dictionary intended for English speakers who are serious scholars of Māori. There may some point to an argument that virtually all Māori speakers who seriously study English are perfectly capable of using English-language materials for the purpose. But I think both groups would benefit from the clarity afforded by seeing English from a Māori perspective.
I would suggest as a model the excellent Collins series of foreign language dictionaries, the similar Oxford series, and the Russian-English and English-Russian dictionaries put out by the Russian Language Publishers (Izdatel'stvo «Russkij Jazyk») under the editorship of Professor O.S. Akhmanova and I.R. Galperin respectively. The Collins ones are often done jointly with publishers in other countries such as Robert for French and Sansoni for Italian.
There are certain areas where a difference of approach is desirable for a Māori and English dictionary from that used for other languages. Māori, like other Polynesian languages, and English, unlike other European languages, both have many words which function both as verbs and as nouns. The approach followed by most dictionaries of other languages is to treat the verb and noun as two separate words, each with its own heading-walk (noun), as in, He goes for a walk; and walk (verb), as in, They walk down the street. I believe it is more appropriate in a Māori and English dictionary to keep the various meanings of a verbal noun with the corresponding meanings of the verb, and make the distinctions of nominal and verbal use within these divisions.
Two things I would like to see incorporated into bi-lingual dictionaries generally are a statistical and a thesaurian component. (Is thesaurian a horrible word? Worse than thesauric?). An indication of the frequency of words would be an invaluable aid to language learning, both for students and teachers. The same is true of grouping words together by meaning and context, especially words that are part of a sequence or a more-or-less closed group, like numbers, seasons, days of the week, months of the year, planets of the solar system, constellations, parts of a wharenui, elements of the periodic table &c. And broadening it to include word-lists of animals, occupations, foods, parts of a house, etc, would be no bad thing, either-the little pocket-sized books that cater to this need already are only a fraction the size of a full-scale dictionary. These groupings could be inserted in the dictionary under headwords like constellation, wharenui, colour, etc.
Other odds and ends, which I may add to as I think of them:
New Zealand English terms, such as chook, hard-case, etc, should be included in definitions alongside more formal or universal English words.
Where a Māori word is commonly used in English (names of plants, birds, fish, and so on), this should be given as part of the English definition, the first part, if it is the usual term-kiwi, tōtara, pō(w)hiri, kaupapa-along with other English equivalents and descriptions/explanations.
Linked with this, some sort of marker should be given for Māori words used by NZE speakers even when there is a ready English equivalent-whānau, mokopuna, and the like. There are also words used by Māori speakers speaking English in a Māori context, not used by non-speakers of Māori, such as pātai (question), raruraru (problem), wharepaku (toilet), and so on. Perhaps kaupapa belongs here as well.
A dictionary that deals more fully and more precisely with the dialects would be a big plus, even if constraints of size have to limit this. Rather than telling us that such-and-such is used 'in some dialects,' tell us which dialects. A particular priority would be variant terms for names of birds, fish, plants, etc. Words like kiwi, kererū, and others, are not (or were not) universal among the various iwi. Indicating variants in their own place, and under the entries of the words to which they are a variant, would be hugely useful. Signalling words in which some regions have wh, others h, should be a priority, as both variants of such words are widely used in Māori teaching materials.
The dictionary should be useful both for modern Māori and for reading and translating older material.
It may be necessary now to distinguish between the reo Māori of the native speaker who is part of the line of natural transmission of the language, and the speaker whose first language is Māori, but has learned it from people whose first language is English. It is certain that there will be differences between the two groups, and while a priority of emphasis must be given to the first group, Māori usage among the second grouping also needs to be documented, especially as many neologisms, often necessary ones, are more the domain of this group and of second language speakers.