Latin-Slovenian Dictionary Published after 113 Years
The Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Kres publishing house have published the sixth and final volume of the Latin-Slovenian dictionary, which is the last chapter in a 113-year old crime story, as the publisher's director Selina Ambroz labelled project on Monday.
The dictionary, comprising 48,588 headwords, is one of the most comprehensive Latin-Slovenian dictionaries in Europe, Latin scholar Kajetan Gantar explained.
It is also the second largest dictionary in Slovenia, right after the dictionary of Slovenian standard language.
Gantar added that similar projects in Europe were carried out by large groups of experts and with high financial support, while the experts making the Slovenian dictionary were driven by enthusiasm.
The idea for the dictionary came from a group of Latin scholars 113 years ago, according to editor Matej Hribersek.
Bishop Anton Bonaventura Jeglic offered to fund the project and editor Fran Wiesthaler prepared the first book for print in 1914, however the project was interrupted by the World War I.
The first volume was thus published in 1923, but then the project encountered financial problems and it was not until the 1930 that it was revived by bishop Gregorij Rozman, only to be interrupted again by World War II.
A crate containing the materials for the dictionary ended up at the academy and in 1990 Dusan Drolc of Kres again came up with the idea to publish the dictionary. In the following years, classical philology students toiled over the notes, facing several problems, from obsolete language to illegible handwriting.
Kres is planning to publish all six volumes in one single tome and an e-version of the dictionary.
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