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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2014

Making the first standard Portuguese-Capeverdean dictionary: a technical challenge

Résumé

Today, in the Republic of Cape Verde, two languages are in daily use: • Capeverdean, a Portuguese-based Creole language, is the mother tongue, spoken by nearly all of the 500,000 inhabitants of the country. Capeverdean Creole is also in current use among the Capeverdean diaspora, particularly in the U.S. (more than 200,000 speakers). In Portugal, Capeverdean is the second language in use after Portuguese, with over 100,000 speakers (Quint 2005: 26-27). • Portuguese is the official language of Cape Verde, and the only one used in written communication, government services and schools. The coexistence of two languages (Capeverdean and Portuguese) in Cape Verde and in Capeverdean communities can be seen as a cultural treasure. However, the present-day situation of diglossia (Duarte Almada 1998; Quint 2000b: 243) in particular in Cape Verde and Portugal, where Capeverdeans speak Creole and have to learn Portuguese at school, can sometimes lead to linguistic confusion. In 1998, the Capeverdean Parliament officially recognized the role of the Capeverdean language (Conselho de Ministros 1998: 18-23). This could, in time, lead to the introduction of Creole in Capeverdean schools and favor the appearance of a bilingual society. However, in order to teach Capeverdean, it is necessary to standardize the language and to provide adequate didactic material, especially grammars and reference dictionaries. Some Capeverdean dictionaries are already available and provide translations for several thousands of Capeverdean items into Portuguese (Fernandes 1991; Quint 1998; Lang 2002), English (Pires & Hutchison 1983), and French (Quint 1999). However, except for the Portuguese-Creole lexicon of Lopes da Silva (1957) and a rather short French-Capeverdean dictionary written by Quint (1997), there is still no sizeable reference lexicographic work offering translation from a foreign language into Capeverdean. Between 2000 and 2002, our Capeverdean, Portuguese and French team built the first standard Portuguese- Capeverdean dictionary. This task was quite a challenge from at least two points of view: - (1) technically, because of the scarcity of economic and human resources and the lack of previous work in this specific field, and - (2), linguistically, particularly because of numerous problems arising from the non-standardized status of the Capeverdean language. In this article, we will begin by describing the characteristics of the dictionary we have produced. Then we will explain in detail the difficulties we encountered, and the solutions and methodology we developed in order to solvethem. We will illustrate each point with examples taken from our dictionary, which was finally completed and published during the second half of 2002.
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Dates et versions

hal-01169443 , version 1 (29-06-2015)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-01169443 , version 1

Citer

Nicolas Quint. Making the first standard Portuguese-Capeverdean dictionary: a technical challenge. DE FÉRAL Carole; KOSSMANN Maarten; TOSCO Mauro. In and Out of Africa Languages in Question, In Honour of Robert Nicolaï, Vol. 2 Language Contact and Language Change in Africa, 2 (2), , pp.141-161, 2014, 978-90-429-2927-2. ⟨hal-01169443⟩
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