The history of Dutch dictionaries goes back to the Middle Ages. Despite revolutionary changes due to the printing press and digitization, collecting and describing our vocabulary remains indispensable.
The very first word lists we know are more than 4000 years old and written in cuneiform. They have been found on clay tablets in Mesopotamia. If we look closer to home and limit ourselves to Dutch, we end up in the 13th century, when clerks drew up the first word lists.
They were collections of Latin words with explanations in Dutch. Latin was the language in which literate people communicated in the Middle Ages. To learn and understand that language, the word lists were good tools. They were copied and adapted to other languages and dialects. They became glossaries or vocabularies named. The oldest glossary of Dutch from 1240 contains words like husrat (household goods), ellenboghe (yes, with an n), and steal.
The printing press
Obviously, there weren't many of these handwritten word lists. A revolution was the invention of the printing press at the end of the Middle Ages. It had consequences for all kinds of disciplines and certainly also for lexicography :writing dictionaries. Not only could dictionaries appear in a much larger print run, the printing process also made the articles (the keywords together with the information about that word given below) appear more systematic and uniform.
In 1477 the first dictionary was published in Cologne in which not Latin, but Dutch (or rather Lower Rhine, a Dutch-German dialect) was the main keyword. In the following century, the printing press flourished in Antwerp. Our most important dictionary maker also worked there:Cornelis Kiliaan. In his dictionaries he was one of the first to add data on dialects, the origin and use of keywords. For example, you could read that the word armbow in 1599 was 'vetus' (obsolete); ‘see ellen-boghe ’, is written behind it.
Multilingualism in the Golden Age
In the seventeenth century, the Netherlands was a trading nation. For those who earned their living from foreign trade it was important to be able to speak and understand foreign languages. Artists and scientists also often had contact across the border. Therefore, many multilingual dictionaries (polyglots ), with two to four or even more languages.
This included French, German and later English, of course, but also Spanish and Polish. At that time, Dutch had many loanwords from Latin and French. Special dictionaries appeared with technical terms and other words with a Dutch equivalent. Not only to clarify the meaning, but also to encourage users to use their native language. This is how repairable . got the explanation 'recoverable' and virus 'poisonous pus' (a meaning from 1663).
Language pride
A dictionary is not only useful to use. It can also be seen as a display of your own beautiful language that you can be proud of. In the nineteenth century, this idea was realized in a huge dictionary project:the Dictionary of the Dutch Language (WNT). It was closed after a century and a half in 1998 at the Institute of Dutch Lexicology (INL). The WNT describes the history of Dutch words from 1500 onwards. The use of the words is illustrated by quotations from all kinds of writings:from poetry collections to cookbooks, from technical manuals to Bible translations.
The WNT has 43 volumes and covers more than three meters of bookshelf. It is so extensive that it describes as many as 23 meanings of the word woman. It also contains many expressions and proverbs. Who wants to know what a tall stick is (having something on his or her trump card) or heug en meug (doing something against all odds) can find the answer there. Special dictionaries have also been compiled on the INL for even older Dutch, from before 1500. Indispensable for scientists and others who want to read and understand ancient texts.
School dictionaries
At the same time as the WNT started, the nineteenth century, the first school dictionaries rolled off the press. Not only for the foreign languages, but also for Dutch. They helped students with the correct spelling and precise meaning of the vocabulary. De Van Dale, intended for students and other users, grew from a modest book in 1872 into the three-volume Dikke Van Dale of today. A dictionary describes the language as it really sounds, but also provides information about its use. Is a word coarse, informal, or formal and old-fashioned? Is it only known as a technical term or does it belong to the youth language? Do we say howl only from animals and cry from humans, or also from wolves?
School dictionaries are normative:they say how Standard Dutch should sound. In contrast, general dictionaries are descriptive (descriptive) and reflect actual language usage. Despite this, they are often called off when there is a disagreement about a word:“You see, it says so in Van Dale.”
Dictionary or Google?
A second revolution in knowledge transfer is digitization:looking up has become googling! Dictionaries in book form are taking up less and less space. But what we find on the internet at the moment is largely based on existing, paper dictionaries.
Existing dictionaries such as the WNT and Van Dale are being digitized, and new dictionary projects, such as the Algemeen Dutch Dictionary (ANW), are based on digital material. These new projects can then have much more word material at their disposal than before, and search and organize it much faster and better. The computer can cry . all subjects and howl select and measure the frequencies. After the collection, the editors of such digital projects also have to work systematically to describe words correctly and completely. They use their linguistic and cultural knowledge, as well as existing dictionaries.
Never throw away
The vocabulary is always changing. New additions are easy to add to digital dictionaries, and there is no longer any need to omit obsolete words:digital files are limitless. In our old dictionaries one had to gamble with space. Words were added and deleted, but this also had an advantage. Because it is precisely because of this that we now have insight into which words were in use in a certain period. Medicine and medicine appear in a dictionary for the first time in 1658 and the term biology in 1824. For example, in prints from around 1900 you will find many compositions with steam- :steam fire hose, steam tram and steam heating. That is why we should never throw away old editions of dictionaries. They give a good picture of our linguistic history, but also of our cultural history. And that is why the systematic description of words for dictionaries, printed or digital, remains indispensable.