The birth of an idea

1. A magyar nyelv nagyszótára‘Comprehensive Dictionary of Hungarian’(Dictionary of the Academy)A brief historyTamás Péter SzabóDepartment of Lexicography RIL HAS

2. The birth of an idea • 1825: foundation of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences • 1830: scientific activity starts at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (chair: József Teleki) • 1831: decision: a comprehensive dictionary of Hungarian must be published by the Academy • 1817: ‘On the goals and methods of making an immaculate dictionary’ by József Teleki Johann Nepomuk Ender: The allegory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1831)

3. The first approach • Czuczor–Fogarasi: A magyar nyelv szótára ‘A Dictionary of the Hungarian Language’ (made from 1844 to 1861, published from 1862 to 1874 in 6 volumes)

4. New goals • The dictionary of Czuczor and Fogarasi was complex, but its methodology and its theoretical framework was doubtful • The publication of new dictionaries was decided: • Szarvas, Gábor–Simonyi, Zsigmond (eds.): Magyar nyelvtörténeti szótár ‘Dictionary of the History of Hungarian’ (published between 1890 and 1893) – based on Hungarian texts written until cca. 1750 • Szinnyei, József (ed.): Magyar tájszótár ‘Dictionary of Hungarian Dialects’ (published between 1893 and 1901) – based on previous dictionaries and new data collection • A magyar nyelv nagyszótára (‘Comprehensive Dictionary of Hungarian’) – based on Hungarian texts (standard language) written from cca. 1750 to 1900 …1960 …1990. Present concept: texts written between 1772 (enlightment) and 2000/2010. Editor in chief: Nóra Ittzés

5. Data collection • 1899: data collection started with great enthusiasm, following a list of (planned) headwords (until the 1960s cca. 6 million slips were made)

6. Using the slips– for writing other dictionaries • Bárczi, Géza–Országh, László (eds.), A magyar nyelv értelmező szótára ‘An explanatory dictionary of Hungarian’ (7 volumes, 1959–1962) • Benkő, Loránd (ed.), A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára (with German explanations; 4 volumes, 1967–1984) – its 2nd edition is Etymologisches Wörterbuchdes Ungarischen (3 volumes, 1993–1997, written in German) • Juhász, József et al. (eds.), Magyar értelmező kéziszótár ‘A Concise Dictionary of Hungarian’, 1972 (new edition: 2003). • B. Lőrinczy, Éva (ed.), Új magyar tájszótár ‘A New Dictionary of Hungarian Dialects’ (5 volumes, 1979–2010)

7. Lexicography and computers • 1984: decision: the elaboration of the entries must be based on an electronic corpus • 1986–1996: building a new corpus (maintenance is continuous)http://www.nytud.hu/hhc/

8. Historical Dictionary Corpus • Cca. 27.3 millionwords – and it is notenough! Writing and editing entrieswasnotpossibleusingonlythissource

9. Additional databases • Good old slips… (at least 30 million words) • Novels, poems, journals and other periodicals, scientific monographies and other sources are available in a digitized format, on CD or DVD • Cca. 335 million words are searchable in our collection of digitized sources

10. Life in 2032as we can imagine… Space tourism becomes popular

11. Life in 2032as we can imagine… Space tourism becomes popular Our last volume appears