Authors

Discussion

Avzag is a linked dictionary for the languages of the Caucasus. The Caucasus, that has been called "Mountain of Languages" by the Ancient Greeks, is home to over 50 languages from different language families. Among these language families are the authochthonous Caucasian languages (Nakh-Dagestani in the North-East, Abkhazo-Adygean in the North-West, and Kartvelian in the South) as well as Indo-European (e.g. Ossetic, Armenian) and Turkic (e.g. Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk). The majority of these languages is classified as threatened by UNESCO. One of the biggest obstacles for working with these languages is the lack of accessable dictionaries; they are either not digitised, over 50 years old and often in Russian, which makes it hard for non-Russian speaking people. Avzag is an application that will help to overcome these obstacles. So far, editors for six languages and dialect are working on the dictionary, creating entries. These entries are all accompanied by a semantic tagging system that allows cross-lingual search and, when searching for a lexeme it enables to see the output in all selected languages at once. Avzag thus provides digital support for endangered languages and aims for the interest of young people or their native languages.
This presentation will provide an introduction to the dictionary by showing how entries are created. It will also demonstrate how to search for specific vocabulary and how the typo-tolerance of the program works.