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While creating an English thesaurus for Kikuyu speakers seems simple enough, it can be tricky. What's the problem? Translations do not always follow strict transitivity. Normally, if a=b and b=c, then c=a. This is not necessarily true in linguistics when b is an English word that has more than one part of speech. For example, "test" is a verb, noun and adjective. What is the correct English synonym for "a" (in Kikuyu) when "b" (in English) has synonyms ("c") having many parts of speech? Furthermore, what if "a" (in Kikuyu) is ambiguous and has several translations into English ("b")? This thesaurus embraces this ambiguity by giving as much information to the reader as possible. This was accomplished in two phases. In the first phase, maximum-likelihood English translations of the Kikuyu subject words are given. For all the languages covered in Webster's Online Dictionary translations are determined using rather massive content analyses of translations from various sources including translations of United Nations documents, translations of the Holy Bible (and similar sources), training manuals, popular works, and academic sources. An English translation having the highest probability of being used is reported first, then the second most probable is reported second, and so on. In the second phase, English synonyms for all parts of speech, including those not related to the original Kikuyu subject, are given for each English translation generated by the first phase. If an English entry is most used as a certain part of speech (estimated based on an English language corpus), then English synonyms for that part of speech are listed first. This indicates to the speaker of Kikuyu how the English subject word is most used. Other parts of speech are listed based on their frequency of usage in English. Within each part of speech, synonyms most likely to be used in English are listed first. Readers who seek further information on any of the words in this book, including translations to other world languages, can freely refer to Webster's Online Dictionary (www.websters-online-dictionary.org).

Product Identifiers

PublisherIcon Group International, Incorporated

ISBN-100497835487

ISBN-139780497835484

eBay Product ID (ePID)118746898

Product Key Features

Publication Year2008

TopicAfrican Languages (See Also Swahili)

Book TitleWebster's Kikuyu-English Thesaurus Dictionary

LanguageEnglish

GenreForeign Language Study

AuthorInc. Staff Icon Group International

FormatCompact Disc / Ringbound

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

Compiled byIcon Group International, Inc. Staff

Table of ContentKikuyu to English Thesaurus 1A 1B 1C 2E 3F 3G 3H 8I 11K 14M 22N 28O 33R 34T 37U 41V 43W 43Index of English Subjects to Kikuyu Subjects 45A 45B 45C 46D 46E 47F 47G 48H 48I 49J 49K 49L 49M 49N 50O 50P 50Q 51R 51S 51T 52U 53V 53W 54Y 54Z 54Vocabulary Study Lists 55Verbs (Kikuyu - English) 55Verbs (English - Kikuyu) 56Nouns (Kikuyu - English) 57Nouns (English - Kikuyu) 58Adjectives (Kikuyu - English) 59Adjectives (English - Kikuyu) 59Index 61

Number of Pages120 Pages