• SomeoneElseMod@feddit.ukOPM
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    1 year ago

    For anyone interested here’s a very abbreviated rough list of the first ever dictionaries, summarised from Wikipedia:

    • First Sumerian-Akkadian word list is dated around 2300 BCE.
    • The first surviving monolingual dictionary is Chinese and from 3rd century BCE.
    • First Arabic dictionary was from 8th century.
    • The oldest surviving Japanese dictionary is from 835.
    • The word dictionary was invented by an Englishmen in 1220. There are English-Latin, English- French and English-Spanish bilingual dictionaries from this time.
    • First Latin dictionary was published in 1440.
    • The first alphabetical English dictionary was published in 1604.
    • A Spanish, Italian and French dictionary were published ~1611.
    • The first American dictionary was completed in 1825.

    I would have thought there would be dictionary of hieroglyphics before any of them, but if there was it hasn’t survived.

    • ristoril_zip@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      So wait is the original meaning of dictionary more like “a way to translate from one language to another?”

      • SomeoneElseMod@feddit.ukOPM
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        1 year ago

        Bilingual word lists seem to have been first. I guess it depends on how you define what a dictionary is. The very earliest English one wasn’t even in alphabetical order, which seems pretty important for a dictionary imo!

        • ristoril_zip@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          Oh man looking a word up in that must’ve been frustrating. Like a definition book with a list of words just in the order the author thought of them… Hilarious.