Tag: site update

I’ll be starting up at a new institution soon, so I will likely have significantly fewer resources available. I’m pleased with amount of data I have made available, and will likely be adding more as I have the time, but at a much slower pace.

News item no.1: Tehlikedeki Dil Dergisi, a journal that was an excellent source for several varieties, seems to have disappeared. It’s now become the website Son Sesler. With any luck the journal will be re-uploaded and added to.

New item no.2: I am working on adding search suggestions to the search box. Sometimes it works, sometimes it crashes the entire site. Once I’ve made this work, it will likely be the last update for some time.
Edit: It works! I’m still shaky on PHP, and I think I was trying to re-use an array without resetting it or something…

I’ve gotten sorting and sticky headers to work on all of my tables. What needs to be done now is figure out how to sort each column individually. On the Doerfer page, for example, we need to sort by English, German, Persian, and Doerfer’s Persian transliteration. Also, Azerbaijani (for example) sorts differently from English, with <x> following <h> and <q> following <k>. And, of course, the various Cyrillic alphabets have their own idiosyncrasies.

I’ll further have to figure out how to sort my transcribed forms. I think I’ll base it on character shape and try to be as consistent as possible. Whatever I figure out will be available on the Transcription page.

After that, I’ll look into introducing filters on the Language Forms page and maybe on the Compare page to enable filtering by lexical class and things like numerals, colors, animals, etc.

I’ve completely overhauled the website’s architecture. This shouldn’t result in any visible changes, but should ensure that there are no more broken links. Please let me know if you encounter any.

I’m still here!

I’ve got about 50 entries to add for Urum (what a slog!), and then I can move on. I have been considering condensing everything on this site into a single page that is navigable by PHP. Not sure if that’s wise, but I would like to make some further changes to the basic architecture, and it would be nice not to have to edit 10-15 pages every time I do that.

One big change I’m considering is introducing a Library page. There’s a lot of good material out there in the public domain, and I think visitors would find it useful to be able to access some of it. A little related side project I have going is creating a guide to Radlov’s Опыт словаря тюркских нарѣчій / Versuch eines Wörterbuches der Türk-Dialecte. It isn’t completely done yet, but I’m happy with my progress.

I previously mentioned that I wanted to add some new glosses to the site. I haven’t done so yet, but one reason I would like to is because I have been inspired by a series of posts by Victor Mair over at Language Log. The one on honey is particularly interesting, as Turkic *bal? could easily be related. There are a number of very old Wanderwörter that suggest connections between Sinitic and Indo-European, with various Central Asian languages playing intermediary roles. Words for things like apple, honey, deer, tea, silk, etc. have all traveled throughout Eurasia. Finding Turkic connections would be especially interesting.

I’ve also begun adding etymologies where possible. It’s been interesting reading more about these, especially as I have comparatively little experience with older Turkic languages and even less with the languages early Turkic was in contact with.

Unrelated to all of this, I’ve begun a second blog where I discuss multilingual issues in the library catalog. I have a lot to say, but so little time to say it. So far I’ve just posted a quick hello. I hope to have some posts about the history of character encoding soon.

Expect further changes, likely sometime in February!