Allo: A Modern Digital Dictionary Platform for Ancient Languages
Creators: name: Dedovic, Boban
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023
Subjects: Lexicography
Latin
Digital dictionaries
Digital humanities
linguistics

description: Ancient languages matter. They connect us to our ancestors and draw attention from many fields of study. Despite overwhelming interest, the practical study of ancient languages is usually limited to persons with access to training and resources. For introductory students, the dictionary is usually located in the appendix of the assigned grammar book. For advanced study, many ancient languages have one or more physically large, expensive, inaccessible, and difficult to use dictionaries. A systematic review of both print and digital dictionaries for eight ancient languages yielded three recurring challenges: accessibility, usability, and scope. To illustrate: the <em>Oxford Latin Dictionary </em>contains 2,400 pages with tiny font and weighs 9.1 pounds. The <em>Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek</em> is similar; and, digital access to both requires institutional affiliation. The <em>Chicago Assyrian Dictionary</em>, although digitized, is comprised of over twenty volumes. In languages like Ancient Egyptian, Akkadian, and Sumerian, yet another difficulty is added. Vital dictionaries for these languages require a separate publication of sign lists to understand the script. In many cases, these resources are hand-written in French or German. While the Internet has helped with respect to distribution of some of these materials, the challenges noted above—particularly usability—remain. This is not to say that these resources are inadequate or their creators inferior; rather, there exist hitherto unexplored opportunities to leverage the Internet in order that trade-offs are mitigated. It is therefore necessary to reconsider the goals and priorities of digital dictionaries. Enter Allo–a modern dictionary platform for ancient languages. Each dictionary contains 1,000 high-frequency words. It is designed to be accessible, user-friendly, and suitable for advanced users. To accessibility: we offer it online, charge nothing, and do not require registration. To usability: the interface is optimized for tablet and mobile devices via our design-oriented approach. Because we regarded speed and search as the most critical goals, features like autocomplete, caching, and a recommendation engine are fully integrated. These features may reduce the time it takes to find a given entry by orders of magnitude; based on a small user study, up to 50 times faster than a print book and 5 times faster than a PDF file. To content scope: all entries are aggregated such that they include both a beginner and advanced resource. The federated, or aggregated, model we chose allows us to make updates when new resources are released. Each entry contains between 30–50 individual data fields. Full page images of original source materials and cursor-zooming are built in. Advanced users can find grammatical details, tables of forms, usage frequency statistics, example sentences, and a comprehensive but compact grammar from authoritative sources. We demonstrate the benefits of this approach in our first complete language: Allo Latin, a digital Classical Latin–to–English dictionary kindly provided on https://allo.conscious.ai/latin. Our experience suggests that digital dictionaries must be aggregations of information about a given entry and packaged in a clean user interface. Future innovation likely requires intense cooperation among three concerned parties: a technologist, lexicographer, and language expert.
description: This work underwent peer review in order to be presented at the 24th Biennial Conference of the Dictionary Society of North America in Boulder, Colorado, from May 31–June 3, 2023. Submitted February 1, 2023. Accepted February 7, 2023. The name "ALLO" is an acronym for "Ancient Language Lexical Ossuary," and an ossuary is a container or location for the remains of the deceased. The Allo logo 𒀀 is the A sign in Sumerian cuneiform, which is believed to be the world's first writing system as of this writing. Partial funding for the production of this work was provided by the OMNIKA Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity whose mission is to organize and make freely available all the world's mythological stories. Website: https://omnika.conscious.ai Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Boban Dedović. Email: boban@uchicago.edu