In a dictionary (e.g. the Dikke Van Dale) the definition of a word is given in the same language. What is the minimum Dutch required to understand a dictionary? Is there a list for that?
Answer
Hi Anne,
I forwarded your question to Dr. Tanneke Schoonheim, Head of Description & Production Department, INL · Treasury of the Dutch Language.
You can read her answer below:
“There has been some research on the vocabulary needed to understand a dictionary, but I have no references to hand. Some dictionaries use a limited vocabulary to define the terms they contain. For in English, for example, this was done by MacMillan, where a definition vocabulary of about 3000 words is used for the dictionaries. I have no data for Dutch, but I suspect that you will get a long way with the 5000 most frequent words of Dutch. Last year a frequency dictionary of Dutch was published in which these 5000 words can be found, with separate lists by genre (literature, newspapers, internet and spoken language): Carole Tiberius and Tanneke Schoonheim, A Frequency Dictionary of Dutch (Routledge 2014 ).”
For further questions you can contact her yourself:
tanneke.schoonheim@inl.nl
INL Treasury of the Dutch Language
Matthias de Vrieshof 2 · Room 202c · 2311 BZ Leiden
Phone. +31 (0)71 527 2477 www.inl.nl
Furthermore, I can inform you that the definitions in the Collins COBUILD Dictionary are claimed to be based on a basic vocabulary of 2000 words.
Regards,
Sonia Vandepitte
Translation, interpreting and communication
Head of English department Great Britain avenue 45
EMT coordinator 9000 Gent
Professor tel + 32 9 33 11 9 44
http://www.vtc.ugent.be fax + 32 9 33 11 9 29
Answered by
Dr Sonia Vandepitte
translation studies linguistics interpreting multilingual communication
http://www.ugent.be
.