A Bilingual Greek Romanian Dictionary from the 20th Century that Has Been (too) Little Known Cover Image

Un dicţionar bilingv eleno român din secolul al XX lea (prea) puţin cunoscut
A Bilingual Greek Romanian Dictionary from the 20th Century that Has Been (too) Little Known

Author(s): Mioara Dragomir
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Editura Tracus Arte
Keywords: katharevousa; dimotiki; compound word; idiomatic construction; reevaluation; information exploitation; the first Greek Romanian modern dictionary

Summary/Abstract: Hector Sarafidi’s dictionary is the first Greek Romanian modern dictionary. According to his own statement, the author has, first of all, enlisted some of the most common lexemes from katharevousa, a form of the Modern Greek language, and from dimotiki, together with borrowings from other languages. This lexicographic work has been conceived and compiled according to modern criteria. By comparing it with another Greek Romanian dictionary published half a century later, we have reached to the conclusion that numerous words, meanings, idiomatic constructions and compound words appear only in Sarafidi’s work and a significant number has been analyzed in this paper. By using another comparative approach, we have also concluded that the majority of them can be found in a Greek thesaurus dictionary (Hristos Ghiovanis) which shows word usage during different periods of the Greek language. Last but not least, this work is also interesting in terms of word definition, some of them being rare, others regional and others belonging to the familiar register. If a similar, but more extensive dictionary were to appear, the information from Hector Sarafidi’s dictionary should be reevaluated and exploited.

  • Issue Year: XII/2016
  • Issue No: 1 (23)
  • Page Range: 33-45
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: Romanian
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