A Dictionary of the Welsh Language Advanced search

Resources for researchers Main resources Visitors Enquiries How you can help the Dictionary's work 1. Main resources Citation index. Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru has a main collection of over two million citation slips from books, manuscripts, and other sources from the earliest period up to the present time which are kept on traditional paper slips in a specially constructed room. Fewer than 20% of these citations have been included in the Dictionary (see the statistics). Additional slips. In addition to this, there is an auxiliary collection of some 200,000 more recent slips, many of which include corrections or improvements to the text of the Dictionary, as well as new vocabulary. This collection is added to daily. Online drafts of work in progress. Drafts of Dictionary entries which have not been edited finally are posted regularly to this website, so as to make the latest research available at the earliest opportunity and to encourage others to comment upon the work in progress. Concise online edition. An increasing amount of the Dictionary's data is being put online. Eventually this will form a free online concise version of the first edition of the Dictionary. So far, headwords, parts of speech, and cross-references have been made available online. Electronic text of Dictionary. Additionally, the whole of the text of the Dictionary is available in electronic form and may be searched in the Dictionary's offices by researchers, although it has not yet been thoroughly checked for accuracy between A and the end of the letter Ll. Electronic text collection. The Dictionary staff have amassed a collection of electronic texts covering the whole history of the language from a wide variety of sources, including many texts kindly donated to the project by their transcribers. The staff are attempting to establish links with a number of publishers of Welsh material with a view to substantially enhancing this collection which at present comprises about 5,000,000 words of text. Text Corpora. The Dictionary staff are actively examining ways of augmenting the citation collection by harvesting Welsh-language webpages. Prof Kevin Scannell of the Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science of St Louis University, Missouri, is acting as the Dictionary's web corpus consultant and has adapted software he had written for creating text corpora for minority languages from the Web. At the time of writing (March 2004) the corpus stands at approximately 48,000,000 words (see Corpus building for minority languages). It is hoped that this extremely valuable resource might be made available to other researchers in the future, to complement the much more traditional tagged corpus of about a million words of text produced by Canolfan Bedwyr at the University of Wales, Bangor (CEG). See Ellis, N. C., O'Dochartaigh, C., Hicks, W., Morgan, M., & Laporte, N.  (2001). Cronfa Electroneg o Gymraeg (CEG): Cronfa ddata eirfaol, miliwn o eiriau, sy'n cyfrif amlder defnydd geiriau yn y Gymraeg: . [Online], Available at: http://www.bangor.ac.uk/ar/cb/ceg.php.en.

1921-2010 "... one of the largest and most elaborate projects ever undertaken by the University" (Prys Morgan, 1997)

A Dictionary of the Welsh Language Advanced search

2. Visitors Researchers who wish to use the slip collections or consult the unedited draft articles are welcome. However, space for researchers is limited, and because of the pressure of work, only the most basic assistance can be provided. It is not necessary to arrange a visit in advance, but it would be sensible to do so if travelling some distance. The staff work flexible hours, but the office is usually open from 9:00 until 1:00 and from 2:00 until 5:00 every Monday to Friday, excepting the period between Christmas and the New Year, Easter week, and other Bank Holidays. Aberystwyth from the North (photograph: 84K) The Dictionary offices are located in a building shared with the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies alongside the National Library of Wales, about a mile from Aberystwyth town centre and less than a mile from the bus and railway stations. Information about the train service between London (Euston), Shrewsbury, and Aberystwyth is available from National Rail Enquiries, and tickets may be ordered. Taxis are available outside the railway station, and it is possible to catch any Arriva bus travelling north from the bus station outside the Rheidol Retail Park which is near the railway station. The busses stop at the bottom of the private driveway leading to the National Library. Location of the building (photograph: 40K) (The Dictionary is in the small building on the left at the bottom of the picture.) View Larger Map How to get to Aberystwyth, and maps of the University Campus and the town of Aberystwyth. (University of Wales, Aberystwyth) The private road to the Library is a turning off Penglais Road (the trunk road to Machynlleth from the town (A487)) immediately below Pantycelyn Hall of Residence and the Penglais campus of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. There is free parking alongside the National Library, and the Dictionary offices are reached by following the footpath from the car park in front of the main building, but instead of entering the Library by the main entrance, follow the path until it ends. Please do not park in front of the main building, which is an area reserved for designated parking only. Visit the following external website for a list of guest houses and bed & breakfast establishments in Aberystwyth:   accomodation in Aberystwyth.

1921-2009 "Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, the University's answer to the Oxford English Dictionary" (Prys Morgan, 1997)

A Dictionary of the Welsh Language Advanced search

3. Enquiries As might be expected, answering enquiries detracts from the task of writing and editing the Dictionary. However, the staff are willing to answer simple questions connected in some way with the Dictionary's collections. For simple lexical enquiries, Lampeter University's online dictionary and Mark Nodine's online Welsh and English dictionary are very useful.as also is Sabine Heinz and Johannes Heinecke's Welsh and German online dictionary. Those interested in checking Welsh spelling should see Mark Nodine's online Spell Checker and details of Canolfan Bedwyr's CySill spell-checking package, which was also responsible for the Welsh Spelling Checker for Microsoft Office XP which is available from the Microsoft website as well as the language tools in Office 2003 and Office 2007). The staff do not generally answer enquiries concerning place-names as the Dictionary's collections are not appropriate for this. The Melville Richards Place-name Archive and the Welsh Language Board may be consulted online. Our staff do not generally undertake translation work: there are numerous companies in Wales offering such a service. A list can be obtained from The Welsh Language Board. An electronic discussion list exists for discussing Welsh technical terms (welsh-termau-cymraeg-L) and another for discussing electronic texts in Welsh (TESTUNAU). Bibliographic or more general enquiries should be directed to the Enquiry Service, The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. Those who are interested in Welsh corpus studies should consult the CySill Team at Canolfan Bedwyr, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG (tel: 01248 383293; e-mail: cbs001@bangor.ac.uk), who have developed a one million word corpus of Modern Welsh (CEG). Much useful information about Welsh dictionaries, which is especially useful to learners, will be found on the Gwybodiadur website. Researchers are requested to restrict their enquiries to that which cannot be answered practically by consulting a copy of the Dictionary, which is available in most of the important research libraries, and in many public libraries throughout Wales. All enquiries should be sent in writing to: The Editors, Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 3HH or by fax or e-mail to geiriadur@aber.ac.uk or geiriadur@wales.ac.uk). Particularly urgent or simple enquiries may be telephoned to Aberystwyth.

1921-2009 "... the majestic Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru" (Prys Morgan, 1997)

A Dictionary of the Welsh Language Advanced search

4. How you can help the Dictionary's work Supply examples of words which are not in the Dictionary Researchers and others are requested to note any words or phrases which are not recorded in the Dictionary nor in the citation collection. Contributions may be sent by letter or on slips, or our electronic slip form may be used. Supply corrections to the text of the Dictionary All kinds of corrections to the text of the Dictionary are welcome, providing as many details as possible (especially detailed sources if earlier or additional examples are provided). Contributions may be sent by e-mail, letter, or on slips, or our electronic slip form may be used. Supply digital copies of your publications or of Welsh texts The Dictionary staff have a growing collection of digital versions of Welsh texts from various sources, and also digital versions of a number of editions of texts, reference books, bibliographies, etymological references, &c. New additions are always welcome. These facilitate the editors' work by enabling them to search for further examples of words or material on them. Please contact Mr Andrew Hawke in the first instance, to discuss the matter. Be prepared to answer e-mail questions on your colloquial Welsh If you speak Welsh as your first language, and are willing to answer occasional simple questions by e-mail, please supply your details here. Read texts, books, or periodicals for the Dictionary In the past the Dictionary has benefitted from the services of a number of volunteer readers who have contributed tens if not hundreds of thousands of slips to the Dictionary's collections. In order to remain up-to-date, we need volunteer readers to produce citation slips from publications (usually modern ones). If you would like to assist in this way, please contact Dr Manon Roberts to discuss the type of material you would like to read and for further instructions. Every summer the Dictionary has employed a number of students from the University's Welsh departments to read material for the Dictionary. Such readers are normally expected to work in the Reading Room of the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. They are usually expected to read new research dissertations or other recent publications. If you would like to be considered for this type of work, should it be available this year, please contact Dr Manon Roberts who will add your name to the list of applicants for Summer 2004. Complete our questionnaire on the future of the Dictionary A revision of the A-B section of the Dictionary is now in progress, together with a project to produce an online electronic version., but it is not yet certain what the future holds for the Dictionary. One would hardly expect such an important project to end completely, and it is hoped that funding will be available to continue to collect information as the language develops and to prepare for further lexicographical projects. Your ideas are very important to us and to those who will have to decide what is needed.

1921-2009

	Please inform us of any difficulties in using this site at dictionary@wales.ac.uk. Last update: 12 August 2010  © Copyright University of Wales, 1997-2010 Contents | Background | Example page | Work in progress | Statistics | Publications | Orders | Staff | Resources for researchers | How to help us | e-Request | e-Informant | e-Slip | Questionnaire | Bibliography | Revision history | Top | Next | Cymraeg