Tell participants: “This is the beginning of your dictionary!’ 

This creates excitement among participants - their ‘dialect’ is on its way to becoming a 'real language.’  The goal of making a dictionary for their mother-tongue can motivate participants to spend several days collecting words. This is very helpful for obtaining the large number of words needed for the research stage. 

Discuss the basic meaning of 'noun' and 'verb', using examples from other languages familiar to the participants. This will help participants better understand what types of words need to be collected in their work groups.

Some participants may find it helpful to label grammatical categories by using a sentence frame, such as 'I see ____ ' for nouns. The linguist can create sentence frames for nouns and verbs that participants can reference while collecting data. When using frames, keep in mind that a single frame is not likely to work for all nouns or all verbs. It is recommended to provide more than one frame for each word class. 

When discussing nouns:

• Demonstrate writing a noun in both its singular and plural form. 

• Have participants do the same using examples from their native language.

When discussing verbs:

• Review examples of infinitives and imperatives in the LWC or national language.

• Help participants identify the infinitive and imperative forms in their mother-tongue.

  • If an infinitive form cannot be easily found, another simple verb form can be used instead. The goal is to use a basic verb form that can be referenced consistently. 

• Write up examples of these verb forms as a group.

Create samples of the noun and verb cards that participants are to create in their work groups (See "Card Layout" under Word Collection).

Glossing:

Discuss with the participants what languages the words should be ‘translated’ into for their bi-, tri- or quadrilingual dictionary. 

• These ‘translations’ should be written in the form of glosses on each card.

• Nouns in the target language should be glossed with nouns and verbs with verbs. 

When the training is complete, divide participants into work groups to begin word collection.

The following demonstration is based on an African context where participants are familiar with Swahili, Lingala, and French.

The workshop leader can start by asking the group for examples of infinitives in Swahili and have someone write these on the board. Then, they can ask for infinitives in Lingala and have these written on the board, too. Next, the leader can ask the participants to identify the difference between the infinitive forms in these two languages (a ku- prefix in Swahili and a ko- prefix in Lingala). 

The facilitator can then give an example of a language that does something very different, in this case, French. Examples of infinitives in French would be requested and also written on the board. Afterwards, the differences between French and the 2 LWCs can be discussed, specifically that French has 4 different infinitive markings occurring at the end of the word (rather than the beginning). 

The same process would be followed for imperatives, asking first for imperatives in Swahili, then in Lingala, and finally in French. This type of exercise increases participants’ understanding of the verb forms they will need to collect. At the end of the exercise, the leader can ask participants to write 1 infinitive and 1 imperative from their language on the board before they brainstorm more examples in their work group. 

Learnability: While a writing system intended for a different language will not be adequate for the participant's own language, the participants' perspective of how the letters they know correspond to sounds in their language is very important. By allowing native speakers to match the letters they know to sounds that they feel are the ‘same’ in their language, the final orthography will be more intuitive to the language community, making it easier for them to learn. Ease of learning and using the new writing system is the most important factor to consider when making orthography decisions. 

Accuracy: This method also results in a more accurate final product. An outside linguist hears a new language through the grid of his or her own mother-tongue and may miss small differences between sounds in the language under study. In addition, no matter how skilled the linguist, mistakes will happen. These mistakes are often unsystematic in nature. Meanwhile, even though a native speaker’s first attempt to write his or her language may result in representing its sounds with too few (or too many) letters,* he or she will write these sounds in a systematic way. This is an advantage when studying the sound system and also when making spelling corrections after the orthography is finalized. 

Awareness: The process of writing their language with symbols designed for a different one will help participants experientially understand in what ways the writing system they learned in school is inadequate for their own language. 

* The use of too few (or too many) letters results from only having a limited set of letters from which to choose and from general differences in the sound systems of the 2 languages.

All words are to be written on small cards - one word per card. 

• It is best to write in print rather than cursive. There is no need to use capitals, since capitals are never used in word lists or dictionaries. 

• Using pencils (rather than pens) makes editing the cards easier during other activities later on. 

Data collecting is designed to be a social activity with participants working together in small groups. 

• There should be at least one experienced writer in each group who can write the words onto cards. 

• Diversity within groups is encouraged (for example, differing ages and education levels).

Each work group should have a linguist facilitator. 

• The facilitator serves as an encourager. He or she may also give advice on how to handle various issues to prevent the group from getting stuck. 

• In general, facilitators should help participants to stay focused on writing down words so that as many words as possible can be collected. Work groups are often naturally interested in word meanings and may find themselves easily side-tracked by long discussions on the meaning of certain words. If the exact gloss of a particular word is not known, facilitators should encourage groups to use generic terms (for example, ‘tree’) instead of spending time searching for more specific glosses (in this case, the species of tree).  

Prompts such as word lists, semantic domains, and picture books can be used as resources to help collect words. Remind participants that the main goal is not to translate the words on these prompts, but to write down as many nouns and verbs in the mother-tongue as possible. The focus should stay on words natural to the language rather than translations. 

  Lists:

•  Lists of words and/or semantics domains can be helpful for collecting nouns. For example, participants can be asked to write down the names of as many different types of fish, trees, grass, insects, birds, cookware, crops, etc. as they can think of. 

• The 1700 SILCAWL: When using the 1700 SILCAWL as a prompt for word collection, consider whether participants are likely to collect all 1700 items within the allotted time or whether using a shortened list would be preferable. When using a shortened list, make sure to choose culturally-relevant prompts for both nouns and verbs from a variety of categories. 

Pictures:

• Picture alphabets from other languages are a good source for ideas. The words produced from these may be usable later on for an alphabet poster in the language under study (depending on the research results). 

• Picture books or dictionaries can be especially helpful for collecting the names of plants and animals. These domains often have many words, including many unique words. 

• Other advantages of using pictures:

  • Pictures may help words come to mind more quickly, since there is no need to translate from another language. 

  • Pictures do not require the ability to read. 

  • Groups may find that they are able to think of many words based on just one picture. 

  • Having picture references is helpful for outside editors when alphabet booklets and dictionaries are created later on. Pictures can help clarify which 'type of bird' (for example) a particular word refers to. 

Notes on Collecting Verbs:

• Collecting verbs is more difficult than collecting nouns. When using word lists, let the participants know that they do not have to translate every verb on the list.

• One challenge with collecting verbs is that the ‘translation’ of a verb in English or French is not always a single word in the target language. For example, the verb 'to fish' may translate to a verb plus complement, i.e. 'to kill fish.' Focus on collecting individual words (instead of phrases).

•  If a particular verb reminds participants of other verbs, perhaps words that are related in meaning or that sound similar, these verbs can be written down as well. The more words collected, the better.   

In the top right-hand corner: Write 'N' for Noun or 'V' for verb 

In the center: Write 2 forms of the word (as applicable)

Nouns: Write the singular form with the plural form beneath it 

• Writing both forms will help with identifying the noun root. However, if the language does not have distinct forms for singular and plural, only write the one form that exists.

• Depending on the language under study, noun classes may need to be included as well.

Verbs: Write the infinitive form with the imperative beneath it. 

• Both forms should be included even if they are written in the same way. It may be discovered later that they have different tone patterns. 

•  If there is no infinitive, try to find another form that can accompany the imperative.  

In the lower right corner: Write the gloss 

Do not attempt to write tone at this stage. 

• Tone analysis will be done after the vowel and consonant systems have been established. 

A good place to start training is with the basic structural concepts of vowels and consonants. Ideally, all participants should come to an understanding of these 2 categories and be able to give examples of them from their language. 

Next, discuss the concept of ‘syllable.’  Later on, participants will need to be able to sort words according to their syllable pattern as preparation for studying the language's sound system. 

Have participants count syllables by clapping or breaking the flow of speech after each syllable. Start with the LWC then move on to the target language. As participants become comfortable counting syllables, ask them to say words in their language that have 1, 2, 3, and 4 syllables. 

Through these activities, participants will learn to identify and count syllables in their native language. If the language has both open (CV) and closed (CVC) syllables, the participants should learn to recognize both types and find examples from the words they are collecting. 

Present these activities as a kind of game. Not only will these exercises increase participants' understanding of the structure of their language, but they can be fun to do!  

Next discuss the concept of ‘root,’ a slightly more difficult but necessary concept to understand. It is important that research of the language's sound system begins by focusing on the word roots to avoid unnecessary complexity. 

The facilitator can start with a discussion of the singular and plural forms written on the noun cards. 

• Ask participants to identify the difference between the singular and plural forms. 

• Then ask them to identify what is the same. Explain that the part that is the same is the 'root.'

The same type of exercise can be done with the verbs by comparing the infinitive form with the imperative. 

While it is not always possible to identify the root exactly - especially when the boundary between the root and affixes is affected by morphological processes - it is important for participants to understand the general concept. In later activities, they will need to be able to sort words by their root-initial vowels and consonants. 

Participants should go through all the cards collected and sort nouns and verbs into separate bags. 

Although collecting nouns and verbs is the goal, other word classes will almost certainly come up during the word collection stage (for example, numerals, adverbs, and prepositions).  Some of these words will only be able to be assigned a grammatical category when studied in context later. 

Place all such words into a third bag labeled 'other.'  At a later stage, these words can be examined to see if they fit within the overall pattern of the established sound system or if any special sounds and/or syllable patterns appear. 

The first phase of research needs to be based on words consisting of only a single morpheme (which may or may not have obligatory affixes). Set aside any words that appear to be morphologically complex, such as compound words, derived nouns or verbs, and words with additional affixes. Also set aside any words that appear to be loanwords. These types of words can be studied at a later stage. 

If desired, make a voice recording of the words collected.