Title Page

Megiser's Search Engine (1744)

Sample Page

This is the main page for accessing what is known as the 1744 edition of Hieronymus Megiser's Dictionarium quatuor linguarum. It is also referred to as the 3^rd edition. The first two editions were Megiser's, while the 3^rd is actually a complete reworking of the original 1592 edition with the addition of a vast number of Slovenian items. To see pictures of title pages and sample pages from the various Megiser dictionaries, click here.

Megiser Info

Quick Links

• Short Biography of Megiser
• Information About Various Dictionaries
• Search for Items in the Original
  • Produce a Table ^{Note 1}
  • Produce a List ^{Note 2}
  • How to type in queries
• Scroll Through the Original ^{Note 3}
• Use the Original-Orthography Slovenian Reverse Dictionary
• Use the Normalized-Orthography Slovenian Reverse Dictionary
• Dedication

The Megiser dictionaries from 1592 and 1744 offer corresponding items from four different languages from three different branches of Indo-European:

• Teutsch -- German
• Lateinisch -- Latin
• Windisch -- Slovenian
• Wälisch -- Italian

This author has translated the 6108 entries of the 1744 edition into English^{Note 4} and produced a normalized/modernized version^{Note 5} of the Slovenian tokens. This has resulted in a data base with six fields for each record. Typographical errors were found in the original and have been preserved.^{Note 6}

The data available on this site is organized in three ways:

• The data in the basic dictionary is provided in the original order, which is the quasi-German alphabetical order used at the time of publication. For example, U and V are treated as the same for alphabetization.
• A reverse dictionary has been created based on the original Slovenian entries.
• A reverse dictionary has been created based on the normalized versions of the Slovenian entries.

To get acquainted with the dictionary, you can click on the accompanying thumbnail pictures of the title page and the first page of entries. The sample page of entries may give you some ideas about what to search for. Or you can begin by simply scrolling through the dictionary.

Typing in Queries

N.B. The spelling of these languages has changed since 1744. The search engine searches for words and only in the language specified.

You can search in English, Normalized Slovenian or in any of the four languages that appeared in the original dictionary.

Due to the characters used in the dictionary and some limitations of HTML, it is necessary to type certain strange combinations of characters for the searches:

• The modern Slovenian characters with hacheks/streice can be found in the Normalized Slovenian by typing the base character followed by a caret, e.g., c^ for .
• The umlauted vowels in German can be searched for by placing a colon after the vowel, e.g. type a: to get ä. Type # to get ß.
• The ligatures of Latin can be found by typing a slash between the parts of the character, i.e., type a/e to find æ; type o/e to find .
• The old-fashioned s character, , will be found by typing s.
• A splat/asterisk can be used as a wildcard character at the start of the item, e.g., *izh, in the middle, e.g., p*zh, or at the end, e.g., vezher*.
• Because of the inconsistent usage of accents on the vowels, I decided not to include them in the search criteria, but they are printed.

	German				Latin		Slovenian			All
Display	ä	ö	ü	ß	æ
Search	a:	o:	u:	#	a/e	o/e	c^	s^	z^	s

Please send your comments, corrections and suggestions to me.

Options in the Search Forms:

• Boolean is relevant only if you request more than one word -- AND will require that all words occur in the same entry and OR will return entries which have any or all of the words.
• Case sensitive requires an exact match, while insensitive will permit matches with both uppercase and lowercase spellings.
• Language needs to be changed if you want to search for items in a language other than English.

Simply click in the text box of the form you wish to use and type in the text. Tap the ENTER key or click on the Search! button to activate the search.

Dedication

These Web pages are dedicated to Joko Hutter of Globasnica/Globasnitz, Carinthia/Koroka/Kärnten, Austria, a "zaveden Slovenec" who gave me an original copy of Megiser's dictionary and helped me find informants throughout southern Carinthia for my doctoral research. As far as I could determine, this edition of Megiser's dictionary contains the earliest published citations of the terms I described in my dissertation.

NOTES

¹ Search, producing a table: This produces the preferred output, a table displaying one dictionary entry with its record number in each row. Go Back

² Search, producing a list: This produces a list of the records found and is intended for use by those who have a screen resolution of less than 1024 pixels horizontally. Try the one above first to see if it is satisfactory. Go Back

³ Scroll: This method allows you to scroll forward or backward through the dictionary ten (10) entries at a time. You can also jump to the beginning or the end of the dictionary. Or you can click on a letter of the German alphabet below the table of entries. Finally, if you are returning to the dictionary after having been elsewhere, you can jump to any entry by specifying its number. Go Back

⁴ Ten dictionaries were used in my attempt to translate this dictionary into English. This turned out to be an insufficient number for a variety of reasons. Consequently, the translation is unfinished. Go Back

⁵ In my normalization of the Slovenian entries, I have tried to maintain the original word boundaries. The original had s/z and k/h prefixed with the apostrophe. The perl programming language search criteria permit these to be found as separate words even with the apostrophe. About other normalizations of the text: Obviously the modern characters with streice/hacheks come into play...this was a lot of work because of the German-influenced neutralizations of distinctions in the original, s being used for both s and z; sh for both and . I converted syllabic er to r, but I left ar and or to keep the dialect flavor of the original. ei was changed ej, reflecting typical Carniolan pronunciation, but ie was left because it represents the Carinthian dialectal diphthong i with a centering glide. v was substituted for non-syllabic u as in modern Standard Slovenian. Go Back

⁶ A single query, ?, indicates that I am uncertain about my rendering. A triple query, ???, in the English indicates that I had no clue or I have not gotten to it yet. Queries in the original languages indicate that something was illegible or strange. A splat/asterisk is placed in the original languages when I found something to be obviously wrong. There were scribal errors/typos, and I most likely have introduced some myself. Go Back

© 1998-2004 DFStermole
Last modified 29 Aug 04