ARTICLES

 

This, Thing, Fervor, Fulfilment: The Treatment of Pronunciation and Spelling in Dictionaries of the Slovenian Immigration

 

"This", "thing", "fervor", "fulfilment": Die hantering van uitspraak en spelling in Sloweense immigrasiewoordeboeke

 

 

Donna Farina^I; Marjeta Vrbinc^II; Alenka Vrbinc^III

^IDepartment of Multicultural Leadership, New Jersey City University, New Jersey, USA (dfarina@njcu.edu)
^IIFaculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (marjeta.vrbinc@ff.uni-lj.si)
^IIISchool of Economics and Business, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (alenka.vrbinc@ef.uni-lj.si)

 

 

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ABSTRACT

In the second half of the 19th century, dictionaries increased in importance among Americans. They began to be perceived as authorities by the U.S. population; users expected them to provide answers to their questions about language. At the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, on both sides of the Atlantic, the first independent Slovenian publications appeared, intended for Slovenian immigrants to the U.S. The goal of the present article is to examine the treatment of pronunciation and spelling, both in the front matter and in the body of dictionaries of the Slovenian immigration. We examine four dictionaries created by three authors (Kubelka 1904, Kubelka 1912b, Kosutnik 1912, Kern 1919). They were published at a time when there were no readily available resources on English pronunciation or spelling written in Slovenian. This article documents the dictionary authors' explanations of pronunciation and how these explanations were presented to the intended audience. It also documents the treatment of spelling of words with predominantly American and predominantly British variants, at a time when both variants were widely circulating within American society.

Keywords: Slovenian immigration to u.s., bilingual dictionaries, English- Slovenian dictionaries, slovenian-English dictionaries, pronunciation, ipa, respelling, spelling, british English, american English

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OPSOMMING

In die tweede helfte van die 19de eeu het woordeboeke vir Amerikaners belangriker geword. Die Amerikaanse bevolking het woordeboeke as gesaghebbend begin beskou; gebruikers het verwag dat hulle antwoorde op hul taalvrae sou verskaf. Teen die draai van die 19de eeu het die eerste onafhanklike Sloweense publikasies, bedoel vir Sloweense immigrante na die V.S.A., aan beide kante van die Atlantiese Oseaan verskyn. Die doel van hierdie artikel is om die hantering van uitspraak en spelling, beide in die voorwerk en in die sentrale deel van Sloweense immigrasiewoordeboeke, te bestudeer. Ons ondersoek vier woordeboeke (Kubelka 1904, Kubelka 1912b, Kosutnik 1912, Kern 1919) wat deur drie outeurs saamgestel is. Hulle is in 'n tydperk gepubliseer toe hulpmiddels vir Engelse uitspraak of spelling nie geredelik in Sloweens beskikbaar was nie. In hierdie artikel word die woordeboekouteurs se toeligting rakende uitspraak asook die aanbieding van hierdie toeligting vir die teikengebruikers, gedokumenteer. Die hantering van die spelling van woorde met oorwegend Amerikaanse en oorwe-gend Britse variante, op 'n tydstip toe beide variante wydverspreid in die Amerikaanse samelewing voorgekom het, word ook gedokumenteer.

Sleutelwoorde: sloweense immigrasie na die v.s.a., tweetalige woordeboeke, engels-sloweense woordeboeke, sloweens-engelse woordeboeke, uitspraak, ifa, herspelling, spelling, britse engels, amerikaanse engels

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1. Introduction

In the second half of the 19th century, dictionaries increased in importance among Americans for various reasons: the growth of popular linguistic knowledge; industrialization and the growth of technology, which resulted in new vocabulary; and population growth and the expansion of public education as a means of self-improvement, which resulted in a huge demand for books which taught immigrants and others how to speak and write correctly (Landau 2001: 85; Shapiro 2020). Adams (2015: 25) calls this developing attitude of the American public as "linguistic insecurity", an attitude that "was pervasive when Webster published his big dictionary of American English in 1828, urgent as America welcomed waves of immigrants in the 19th and earlier 20th centuries, and relevant to the present day". In short, dictionaries began to be perceived by the U.S. population as authorities, since users expected them to provide answers to their questions about usage, pronunciation, etymology, etc.; in other words, users expected dictionaries to be prescriptive (Landau 2001: 85).

Stanonik (1996) recounts what was happening on both sides of the Atlantic, moving toward the turn of the 19th century into the 20th. The first independent Slovenian publications appeared, intended for Slovenian immigrants to the U.S. Their aim was to provide basic useful information on the English language, the U.S. constitution and organization of the government, the American monetary system and economy. Some of these were printed in America, others in Slovenia. In 1879, the Slovensko-angleska slovnica [Slovenian-English Grammar] came out in Tower, Minnesota. Its author was Peter Jeram, a priest in Wabasha, Minnesota. This is most likely the first book in Slovenian that was printed in America (first reprint 1895). This was followed by an anonymous work entitled Anglescina brez ucitelja. Pomocna knjiga za izseljence [English without a Teacher, a Handbook for Emigrants] (Ljubljana, 1895);¹ another work published in Ljubljana (1904, second edition 1912) is Silvester Kosutnik's Rocni slovensko-angleski in anglesko-slovenski slovar [A Pocket Slovenian-English and English-Slovenian Dictionary]. These reference works were followed by similar books by Viktor Kubelka (two dictionaries and a phrasebook), Frank Javh-Kern (a dictionary; Cleveland 1919), Kazimir Zakrajsek (a children's alphabet book; New York 1917, Chicago 1923) and Ivan Mulacek (a quasi-textbook, a self-study grammar; Ljubljana 1930). Slovenian speakers, insecure about their English or desiring to learn it, could use these dictionaries and grammar books (and possibly other books unknown to us) published before World War II. The Slovenian American users were usually not in a position to evaluate the quality of the books; most had only primary education, so would not be aware of lapses or inconsistencies.

 

2. Aim of the study

Many authors (Landau 2001; Béjoint 2010; Adams 2015) have explored, in the period from the early- or mid-1800s into the 20th century, the relationship of the American public with the dictionaries being created for it. Most or all of this exploration appears to be focused solely on monolingual speakers of American English (AmE) and their use of the monolingual English dictionaries available to them. However, the period 1860-1915 is also a time of a mass migration to the U.S. The Library of Congress (n.d.) notes that "Between 1900 and 1915, more than 15 million immigrants arrived in the United States. That was about equal to the number of immigrants who had arrived in the previous 40 years combined". These immigrants were mostly from Europe, including Slovenians who are our focus here. This is an astounding figure, since the 1860 census estimates just under 31,450,000 people living in the U.S. (United States Census Bureau, n.d.). It is estimated that around 86,000 Slovenians from the area of Carniola came to the U.S. from 1892 to 1913.

While certainly the newcomers had priorities (such as eating and finding work) that took precedence over mastery of the English language, nevertheless they were highly motivated to learn at least survival English in order to function in the new American society themselves and to gain advantages (or avoid disadvantages, including prejudice) for their children. In their daily lives back in the territories of what would become modern Slovenia, these immigrants usually were not extensively educated or used to relying on books. So for them, the sparse bilingual resources they had at their disposal, in the form of sometimes amateurish grammar books (e.g., Jeram 1895), phrasebooks (e.g., Kubelka 1912a), and dictionaries, were imbued with the same high level of authority that monolingual Americans gave their large English dictionaries and other language resources.

Bilingual reference books with English from this period in American history, whether for the Slovenian immigration or for one of the many other immigrant groups, have not received much attention from historians of lexicography or others. While the books may appear elementary, unprofessional, or even primitive to the modern eye, they have much to tell us about American attitudes toward education, reading, and what constitutes correct speech. While the present article addresses just a few of these books - four dictionaries for the Slovenian immigrant community - it should be considered a necessary small step in helping to fill our knowledge gap concerning what new bilingual Americans thought about language and dictionaries.

The body of a dictionary contains a list of headwords or lemmata (i.e., one element of the macrostructure). Each headword is accompanied by multiple pieces of information, which together with the headword constitute the dictionary entry. The microstructure is the internal organization of the various pieces of information which are contained in the dictionary entry. The microstructure consists of detailed information about the headword, with comments on its formal properties (spelling, pronunciation and grammar) and its semantic properties (definition, usage and etymology), as well as other information. The goal of the present article is to examine the treatment of pronunciation and spelling, both in the front matter as well as in the body of the dictionaries of the Slovenian immigration. This, we consider, is in line with the aim of further elucidating attitudes on the correct use of English in speech and writing. We envisage that future work will address other aspects of microstructure, namely meaning and equivalence in the dictionaries intended for new Americans of Slovenian origin.

 

3. Slovenian and English bilingual dictionaries

The present article examines four of the dictionaries produced at the height of the Slovenian immigration to the U.S.² The dictionaries, by the authors Victor/ Viktor J. Kubelka (1904, 1912b), Silvester Kosutnik (1912) and Fran/Frank J. Kern (1919), were created with this target population of Slovenian newcomers in mind. One of these authors, Kubelka, emphasizes in his (Slovenian-language) preface (1912b) the great demand for all of his various Slovenian-English books. In the (Slovenian-language) preface to the (second) 1912 edition of his dictionary, Kosutnik says: "Finally, I need to mention - and this should be considered a proof - how welcome this dictionary was for our emigrants: the first edition was sold out in a short time; due to great demand, I was forced to prepare a revised edition" (p. 4). Kubelka and Kern were Slovenian immigrants and published in the U.S.; Kosutnik, on the other hand, published in Ljubljana, Slovenia and never emigrated to America.

3.1 Dictionary sources

The lexicographic sources used by these authors in the compilation of their bilingual dictionaries are a complete mystery; it is not even clear that there are sources for some of the dictionaries being examined. For these authors of varying degrees of education or knowledge of English and/or Slovenian, it was most likely difficult or impossible to obtain dictionaries that might be relevant to their lexicographic tasks. While it is probable that all three authors knew German well, it is not clear that they were familiar with the German lexicographic tradition or that they had access, particularly in the American context, to English and German bilingual dictionaries. What is more, in the first two decades of the 20th century, the study of English was not widespread in Europe and the number of possible English and German resources was not large.³There are only two instances where, in the dictionaries being inspected here, an author mentions any other dictionary at all: Kern (1919, English preface, p. III) mentions the New Standard Dictionary (first published in 1913) as an influence on his treatment of pronunciation and spelling. Furthermore, he mentions (1919, Slovenian preface, p. V) that, while his own dictionary is appropriate for learners, people with a greater knowledge of English should rely on the New Standard Dictionary or on "Webster".

In our discussions of the dictionaries below, page numbers are often included with examples. We chose this practice for two reasons. First, having a page number available facilitates manual searches when a digital manuscript does not have search-and-find capacities. Second, in Kubelka (1904), the alphabetical order of entries is not always followed and page number information is helpful for expediting searches.

3.1.1 Kubelka's 1904 and 1912 dictionaries

Kubelka's first attempt at a reference book is his Slovensko-angleski zepni recnik v olajsavo naucenja obeh jezikov, Slovenian-English Pocket Dictionary to Facilitate the Study of Both Languages (1904). He would go on to publish a phrasebook⁴ for use by new arrivals. His final and most comprehensive work is Slovensko-angleska Slovnica, Tolmac, Spisovnik in Navodilo za Naturalizacijo, Anglesko-Slovenski in Slovensko-Angleski Slovar, Slovenian-English Grammar Interpreter, Letterwriter and Information on Naturalization, English-Slovenian and Slovenian-English Dictionary (1912b), that included a much larger bidirectional bilingual dictionary as well as other components for language learning.

The central part of Kubelka (1904) is the Slovenian-English dictionary itself (pp. 24-122; 99 pages), in which Slovenian lemmata (column 1) are followed by English equivalents (column 2) and the pronunciation of the English equivalent (column 3). Only the pronunciation is in italics; the lemmata and equivalents are in normal typeface. The larger Kubelka (1912b) has both Slovenian-English and English-Slovenian dictionary components, in addition to other parts. The English-Slovenian dictionary appears first (pp. 210-295; 86 pages) and the Slovenian-English dictionary (pp. 296-423; 128 pages) is second. Unlike Kubelka (1904), Kubelka's new Slovenian-English dictionary (1912b) is designed more professionally. Instead of the three parallel columns of the 1904 work, we now have actual dictionary entries with components in the following order: Slovenian lemma, English equivalent, and English pronunciation of the equivalents in parentheses. Note that we would not expect any modern bilingual dictionary intended for encoding (as the Slovenian-English sections both in Kubelka (1904) and (1912b) surely were intended) to list the pronunciation of equivalents. Normally, pronunciation immediately follows the lemma, so experienced users would not expect pronunciation information about English equivalents. However, this move of Kubelka's to include pronunciation of equivalents is quite reasonable (albeit unorthodox), since his target immigrant population did not consist of experienced dictionary users. His audience would sorely need such guidance on American pronunciation. Finally, we can point out that Kubelka's (1912b) Slovenian-English section uses boldface for the lemmata, followed by normal typography for equivalents and pronunciation.

The English-Slovenian section of Kubelka (1912b) is more basic in design than its Slovenian-English section and uses typography differently. It contains English lemmata in normal typography (no boldface) followed by one or more Slovenian equivalents (usually no more than three) in italics. There is no pronunciation given in the English-Slovenian section, either of the English lemmata or of the equivalents. While a Slovenian speaker does not need pronunciation for the Slovenian equivalents, it would have been quite helpful for the English lemmata. In a modern English-Slovenian bilingual dictionary, certainly pronunciation of English lemmata would be necessary and included.

3.1.2 Kosutnik's 1912 dictionary

Kosutnik's Rocni slovensko-angleski in anglesko slovenski slovar: Zlasti namenjen izseljencem v Ameriko [A Pocket Slovenian-English and English-Slovenian Dictionary: Intended for Immigrants to America] was first published in 1904; the second edition appeared in 1912. Stanonik (1996) called the 1904 dictionary "anonymous", an understandable error given that Kosutnik often used his initials only, making it appear as if the 1904 book was written by an anonymous author. Both the 1904 and 1912 books are listed in the Slovenian National University Library catalogue, with the 1904 edition listed as authored by Kosutnik. The titles of the 1904 and 1912 books are identical and the national catalogue calls the 1912 edition a reprint. The present analysis is based on the 1912 version.

Kosutnik's dictionary is bidirectional, first Slovenian-English (pp. 5-63; 59 pages) and then English-Slovenian (pp. 64-148; 85 pages). The Slovenian-English dictionary has a simple microstructure: lemma in Slovenian, dash, equivalent(s) in English, period; there is no use of either boldface or italics. The English-Slovenian dictionary structure is English lemma, comma, followed by a simplified pronunciation (with primary stress noted as a superscript dash after the stressed syllable), then a dash and the Slovenian equivalent(s). Essentially the structure of both sections is the same, only the English-Slovenian section adds on pronunciation of the lemmata.

3.1.3 Kern's 1919 dictionary

Kern's A Complete Pronouncing Dictionary of the English and Slovene Languages for General Use, Popoln anglesko-slovenski besednjak z anglesko izgovarjavo is the only one of the four dictionaries that has the Slovenian title second and the English title first. Kosutnik did not include an English title at all and Kubelka's two dictionaries list the Slovenian title followed by the English title. We presume that by this later publication date (seven years after the 1912 publication of Kubelka and of Kosutnik), the Slovenian community (and Kern himself) had transi-tioned further on the path to English dominance and that this was reflected in the title choice.

Kern's work consists solely of a monodirectional English-Slovenian dictionary (pp. 1-270). The earliest dictionary, Kubelka (1904), was monodirectional with only Slovenian-English; the middle dictionaries of 1912, Kosutnik's and Kubelka's, were bidirectional, and Kern (1919) is only English-Slovenian. Like with the selection of titles, this arguably indicates the movement of the Slovenian community over to English.

At 270 pages, Kern's dictionary is more than twice the size of the largest (monodirectional) component in another dictionary; the next largest is Kubelka's Slovenian-English component with 128 pages. His dictionary is more comprehensive and professional than its predecessors. The design is the most "dictionarylike" of the four examined here; it resembles most what one would expect from later 20th-century print dictionaries. The English lemma is printed in bold and followed by a comma, pronunciation in parentheses, another comma and then the equivalent(s). The other dictionary that uses boldface in lemmata is Kubelka (1912b) - and only for Slovenian lemmata in the Slovenian-English section.

 

4. Pronunciation

Pronunciation can be defined as the form, production, and representation of speech. It is the phonological counterpart of spelling (orthography); i.e., its shape in the medium of sound in contrast with its shape in the medium of writing (Jackson 2002). While pronunciation and spelling may be counterparts, they are also inextricably linked in complex ways. They both present endless problems and difficulties for the language learner and are a topic of discussion in all of the Slovenian and English bilingual dictionaries targeted here. Their treatment varies from one dictionary to another; certainly considerations of the authors' education and experience inform the divergent treatments, as we will address later in the final discussion and conclusions.

4.1 IPA versus respellings

All of the dictionaries under consideration provide their own respelling systems for indicating pronunciation. It is not surprising that none of them use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent English, given that it was only developed in the late 19th century (Jackson 2002) and not adapted for English until 1904 (Passy 1904); later the International Phonetic Association published samples in many languages, including AmE ("The Principles of the International Phonetic Association" 1912). When Kubelka created his first dictionary, IPA had barely been established; by 1912 and 1919 when the other three dictionaries examined here were published, the alphabet was still hardly used in America and had yet to be adapted for Slovenian.

4.2 Advice is cheap

In addition to their instructions on how to render one or another sound in English, sometimes the authors provide platitudes designed to motivate the learner in persisting with the difficulties of English pronunciation. Kubelka (1904) refrains from this type of advice entirely, but Kubelka (1912b) writes: "English pronunciation is difficult; correct pronunciation is possible only with persistent practice" (Slovenian-language preface, p. 11). Kubelka admits that his pronunciation advice is not perfect, but adds that if he wanted to present the pronunciation of individual phonemes, especially vowels, he would have had to use many symbols, which would make learning English difficult and cause people not to use his book. As we will see, the lengthy pronunciation section of Kubelka (1912b) could have dissuaded potential users from tackling the English language.

Kosutnik (1912) is at the opposite extreme as Kubelka (1912b), and concludes his very brief pronunciation remarks by saying that, while he could bring in many more examples, they would not be very useful for "those layers of society for which this booklet is intended" (Slovenian-language preface, p. 4). Such people, he says, should "listen carefully" when someone speaks English and that they "should use any opportunity offered to them to practice pronunciation" (p. 4).

Kern (1919) is perhaps the most circumspect of our three authors. In his Slovenian preface, he modestly warns the reader not to take his pronunciation instructions too literally: "The diacritics and pronunciation given are only for First Aid". He adds: "It is necessary to learn by means of listening and speaking" (p. IV).

4.3 Kubelka 1904 and 1912b

In both his English- and Slovenian-language prefaces, Kubelka (1904) discusses only the pronunciation of /0/ and explains that, in order to avoid presenting a too-complex pronunciation rule system, he renders it as dz. Kubelka (1912b) has only a Slovenian preface; in it, /0/ is not mentioned. However, in the front matter as part of a lengthy four-page treatment of consonants, Kubelka (1912b) has a revised rendering of this sound as either d or t, and gives as an example father /fadr/ (p. 26).

Following the two prefaces, in the Slovenian-language front matter to his Slovenian-English dictionary, Kubelka (1904) provides each letter of the English alphabet followed by a spelling pronunciation (p. 11). For example, the letter "A" is given the pronunciation ej, which would be the normal rendering of this diphthong in any Slovenian dictionary prior to the use of IPA. Less orthodox renderings are "H" ec, "J" dze, and "W" deblju, which would be more normally rendered ejc, dze], and dabdlju. In Kubelka (1912b), the front matter presents an alphabet list that is different from that in the 1904 dictionary. While "H" and "J" are rendered with the same pronunciation as before, "W" is now doblju. The letter "A" is now given not as a diphthong but as e. Interestingly, in the digitized copy of Kubelka (1912b) that we were working from, some dictionary user of the past made a handwritten correction to the diphthong ej (see Figure 1).

 

 

Kubelka (1904) presents a convoluted system to explain the pronunciation of American vowels in various contexts (front matter, pp. 12-14). The presentation format is a "rule", below which there is a chart in five columns containing a vowel, its pronunciation, an example of an English word with that vowel, the pronunciation of the sample English word, and finally the Slovenian translation of the English word. In Kubelka (1912b), while the greatly revised rule system for vowels is more accurate (and not rendered in charts), it is also quite long (front matter, pp. 12-22, 11 pages) and difficult to follow - and would have been entirely unsuitable for the general Slovenian immigrant audience it was intended for.

As an example, we can examine the discussion of the diphthong /ei/ in both of Kubelka's dictionaries. Kubelka (1904) discusses what he calls "compound vowels", which means words that have two contiguous vowel letters in their orthography. For the spelling "ai" as in rain, Kubelka lists the pronunciation e /ren/; for the spelling "ay" as in pay, he gives the pronunciation eⁱ /pej/ (p. 13). Certainly this is incorrect in terms of actual pronunciation; it is also confusing. Kubelka (1912b) has a different treatment that is closer to reflecting the actual pronunciation of / ei/ in different spellings. However, this treatment is dispersed over numerous disparate "rules" in this 11-page front matter section on the English vowels. For the spellings "ai" and "ay", Kubelka provides (among others) the examples pay /pej/ and pain /pejn/ (1912b, p. 18); for the spellings "ei" and "ey", he has (among other examples) reign /rejn/, eight /ejt/, and grey /grej/ (p. 19).

Within the body of the two dictionaries, we can see Kubelka's pronunciation rules in action. Recall that in both of his dictionaries, Kubelka took the unusual but useful step of providing pronunciation information about the English equivalents of his Slovenian lemmata. For the diphthong /ei/, Kubelka (1904) is consistent with the information given in his front matter; he uses for the lemma bolecina "pain" the pronunciation /pen/ (see Figure 2), for dez "rain" the pronunciation /ren/, for placati "pay" the pronunciation /pej/, and for siv "gray" the pronunciation /grej/.

 

 

On the other hand, the Slovenian-English component of Kubelka (1912b) is not consistent with what he said in the front matter about how /ei/ would be written; he renders this diphthong differently in closed syllables. For the lemma dez "rain", Kubelka gives the pronunciation /ren/, contradicting the front matter. The lemma muciti has equivalents "to torture" / tu tortjur/ and "to pain" / tu pen/; the pronunciation of "pain" does not follow the front matter. The lemma placati has "to pay" /tu pej/, in line with the front matter; osem "eight" /ejt/ and siv-a-o "grey" / grej/ (note the British English (BrE) spelling) are also in line with the front matter.

It is interesting to look at renderings of /o/in the two Kubelka dictionaries. The preface of the 1904 work stated that /o/ would be rendered as /dz/, and the 1912 front matter (consonant section) stated that /o/ would be rendered /d/ or /t/. In 1904, for the lemma oce, the equivalent "father" is given with the pronunciation /fadzer/ (p. 74), consistent with Kubelka's (Slovenian-language) preface. However, for the lemma usnje "leather", Kubelka (1904) provides the pronunciation /leder/ (p. 110), in contradistinction to what his preface said. In Kubelka (1912b), the equivalent "father" is given the pronunciation /fadr/ (p. 354), consistent with what was stated in the front matter. The equivalent "leather" has the pronunciation /ledr/ (p. 411), also consistent. Our investigation showed that in Kubelka (1912b), the rendering of /5/ is consistent throughout the dictionary and in line with what was stated in the front matter.

4.4 Kosutnik 1912

Kosutnik (1912) has a very short Slovenian-language preface (one and one-half pages). It is not signed with Kosutnik's name but instead "The Publisher", although it is evident that this was written by the author. Kosutnik discusses the pronunciation of /ei/, /ae/, /a/, /λ/ /u/, and /yu/ as well as the pronunciation of /j/ (the AmE alveolar approximant usually written as r). He notes that in the word late, the vowel is an e drawn out with a short j (IPA /y/) at the end. The word latter is pronounced as a kind of /a/; however, this sound is not clear but is in between the IPA /a/ and a short /e/. The word lark is pronounced with / a/, as Kosutnik calls it, "the true drawn-out a". About the / j/ in lark he remarks that "this sound can only be heard before [sic] vowels and differs from Slovenian in that it is pronounced softly, without shaking the tongue". Note that in his discussion of lark, Kosutnik is clearly referencing the AmE pronunciation /lajk/ and not BrE /la:k/.

Kosutnik's discussion of the pronunciation of lug /Lvg/ is rather obscure, but he does make the point that the / λ/ is "like a dark a", thus getting at the difficulty that this sound presents for non-native speakers of AmE. In contrast to the pronunciation of the vowel in lug, Kosutnik notes that in the word lune there is a "true u"; elsewhere, in lunula, the pronunciation is jo (i.e., IPA /yo/). Taken as a whole, Kosutnik's pronunciation observations from his preface are accurate. His perceptions of how AmE vowels differ from European ones are correct, even if his statements sometimes sound odd to modern ears.

Unlike the two Kubelka dictionaries, Kosutnik (1912) has no front matter following the (Slovenian-language) preface, so the entirety of his discussion of pronunciation is in the one and one-half page preface devoted to vowels (as discussed above). In the English-Slovenian portion of the dictionary, we can find among Kosutnik's English lemmata similar examples to those in Kubelka's two books. Recall that unlike Kubelka and more in line with standard bilingual dictionaries, Kosutnik does not give pronunciation information in the Slovenian-English component of his dictionary, only in the English-Slovenian component. For /o/ (not discussed in his preface), Kosutnik's lemma father has the pronunciation /fa'dzer/. The lemma leather is pronounced /ledz'er/ (see Figure 3). These and other lemmata with /5/ are rendered consistently; our investigation corroborated consistency throughout for /o/. Note also that Kosutnik gives word stress with ['], something that is entirely missing from Kubelka's two dictionaries.

 

 

For the vowels discussed in the preface, it turns out that Kosutnik is not entirely true to his word within the English-Slovenian portion of the dictionary. For example, for the diphthong / ei/, Kosutnik says in the preface that it is an e drawn out with a short j, as in late. However, his pronunciation transcription uses e only:

eight /et/ (p. 87)

gray /gre/ (p. 99)

pain /pen/ (p. 119)

pay /pe/ (p. 120)

rain /ren/ (p. 127)

reign /ren/ (p. 128)

4.5 Kern 1919

While Kern 1919 has both an English and a Slovenian preface, each has different contents. In his English preface, Kern (1919) explains how he treats pronunciation: "In spelling and in pronunciation I have followed the latest authorities, particularly the New Standard Dictionary, which employs the phonetic method of indicating the pronunciation, and which is similar to the phonetic system of spelling and writing employed in the Slovene (Slovenian) language" (p. III). The New Standard Dictionary was first published in 1913 and revised through 1949; most likely Kern used the 1913 or 1914 edition. We did not have access to the New Standard Dictionary; however, its predecessor, A Standard Dictionary (Funk 1908) employed diacritics to indicate the different vowel sounds, most likely in a similar fashion to the New Standard Dictionary and most likely similar to Kern's system. For example, for the diphthong /ei/, the 1908 dictionary uses e with a macron over it, or ë. In the Slovenian preface, Kern adds that "Spelling and pronunciation of English words follows the American tradition and is somehow different from continental English".

Following Kern's two prefaces, we find a kind of user's guide [Pojasnila] in Slovenian (pp. VI-VII), which is mostly a pronunciation guide plus a brief note on compounds and a short explanation of how to use the dictionary (with an explanation of running heads and alphabetical arrangement of entries). On p. VI of this guide, the pronunciation advice covers vowels and three consonants: th, dh, and w. At the end (p. VII), Kern covers the pronunciation of other consonants.

Kern makes heavy use of diacritics to depict vowel sounds. As an example of one of his explanations, we can take the vowel / ae/ as in cat. Kern notes that ê is an open sound not found in Slovenian: "The mouth must be wide open horizontally and you should pronounce the letter e as in the word be-e-e-, as we say to imitate a sheep". As examples of English words, Kern provides cat /kêt/; rat /rêt/; hat /hêt/ (p. VI).

All the dictionaries examined so far mentioned /o/ as in the, but none of them discussed /θ/ as in thing. Kern discusses and clearly differentiates the two sounds (see Figure 4). For /o/, he uses dh, which he says has "a special sound" in English: "It is pronounced almost like d, if you press the tip of your tongue toward the teeth" (p. VI). As examples, Kern gives that /dhêt/, this /dhis/, and father /fadhr/. For /θ/, Kern uses th, "pronounced similarly to dh, only that instead of d, you try to pronounce t" (p. VI). English word examples provided are: think /think/, thing /thing/, and nothing /na'thing/. Note that Kern's manner of indicating word stress (with a ['] after the stressed syllable) is the same as Kosutnik's.

 

 

Once we turn to the lemmata in the English-Slovenian portion of the dictionary, we see that Kern is consistent in his notation of the sounds of English; the notations are in line with his discussion in the user's guide (Pojasnila):

eight /êjt/ (p. 79)

gray, grey /grêj/ (p. 107)

leather /ledhr/ (p. 137)

pain /pêjn/ (p. 166)

pay /pêj/ (p. 169)

rain /rêjn/ (p. 190)

reign /rêjn/ (p. 194)

 

5. Spelling: British versus American English

5.1 The two Kubelka dictionaries

Many divergences in BrE and AmE spelling took hold in the mid-1800s, and vocabulary differences between BrE and AmE also became more marked at this time (Merriam-Webster n.d.). Talkies, films with a soundtrack, emerged in the late 1920s and brought with them a greater international awareness of the distinctness of American accents. However, all of the dictionaries being examined here were produced earlier, during the silent film era, and like most of the world their authors appear not to have been very aware of, let alone versed in the differences between BrE and AmE, either in pronunciation or in spelling. Only Kern (1919) mentions the existence of two different Englishes when he notes that "Spelling and pronunciation of English words follows the American tradition and is somehow different from continental English" (Slovenian preface, p. IV). And Murphy (2018) homes in on the fact that the developing differences in the two Englishes were driven partially by the immigrants themselves:

During the 19th century, the ethnic de-Britification of white America sped up, due to massive and increasingly diverse immigration. The children of immigrants to the US from Germany, Scandinavia, Ireland, and Italy became English speakers, but would never be Anglo-Saxons. (p. 64)

Google Ngram Viewer is a convenient, albeit imperfect tool (see Zhang 2015) for gaining insight into the development of spelling difference trends between BrE and AmE. In the 1830s and 40s, the use of the spellings color, honor, and favor began to become more frequent than the use of colour, honour, and favour in AmE (Google Ngram Viewer n.d.). Somewhat later, in the 1880s and 90s, defence/defense and fibre/fiber began to be distinguished in terms of frequency in AmE (Google Ngram Viewer n.d.). While nitre/niter appear to follow the pattern of fibre/fiber, because the former word from scientific terminology is so infrequent, the difference between the two variants is not as evident (Google Ngram Viewer n.d.). Despite these trends, Kubelka's 1904 Slovenian-English dictionary lists, under the lemma barva, the spelling "colour"; on the other hand, under the lemma cast, it lists "honor". In contradistinction to Kubelka (1904), in the Slovenian-English portion of the bidirectional Kubelka (1912b), the equivalent for the lemma barva is "color"; for cast it is "honor". While Kubelka (1904) does not contain a lemma obramba, Kubelka (1912b) does, and uses the BrE spelling in the equivalent "defence". This is logical if the divergence between defence and defense only began in the 1880s or 90s; the spelling defense would have been a newer phenomenon in 1912 than would have been the spellings color, honor, and favor. Likewise, in the English-Slovenian component of Kubelka (1912b), the dictionary settled on BrE spellings for the lemmas defence, fibre, and nitre. Note that the spelling choices in Kubelka (1912b) are consistent; the same spelling that appears in a headword in the English-Slovenian section will be used for an equivalent in the Slovenian-English portion of the dictionary.

5.2 Kosutnik's dictionary

Unlike Kubelka and Kern, Silvester Kosutnik was not an immigrant and compiled and published his dictionary in Ljubljana. Given the European setting, it would not be surprising for his choices to favor BrE spelling. Overall, it can be said that his preference is for the BrE spellings. For example, in the Slovenian-English portion of his bidirectional dictionary, Kosutnik has "colour" (under the lemma barva), "honour" (under cast), "labourer" (under delavec), "to labour" (under delati). On the other hand, Kosutnik (1912) has the equivalent "traveler" with an AmE spelling under the lemma popotnik (this is the only AmE spelling we found in the Slovenian-English section).

In the English-Slovenian part, Kosutnik has the lemmata colour, flavour, honour, labour, and labourer, all with BrE spellings. In the English-Slovenian section, we found only the headword favor with an AmE variant; it is a mystery as to why Kosutnik diverged from his normal pattern here. Additionally, as would be expected, Kosutnik lists fulfil with a single -l-, in line with BrE spelling. Compare Kosutnik's approach with that of Kern, below.

5.3 Kern's dictionary

As we noted, Kern (1919) is the only one of the three authors who explicitly mentions the differences between BrE and AmE. Unlike Kosutnik, Kern overwhelmingly uses American spellings with rare forays into BrE (such as defence); Kern is consistent in spelling the same word in the same way throughout the dictionary. Below, the sample list of lemmata provides insight into Kern's approach to spelling:

color

councilor (with equivalents "svetovalec, svetnik")

counselor (with equivalent "svetovalec")

defence with a cross-reference to defense [no indication that defence is BrE]

disfavor

dishonorable

encyclopedic(al)

endeavor

favor

favorable

favorite

fervor

flavor

neighbor

neighborhood

neighborly

tumor

Kern does provide both British and American versions of a lemma in some infrequent instances, rather than using a cross-reference (as he did for defence, given above). Under the letter "E", Kern gives the lemma edema, oedema, with the AmE variant first and the BrE spelling second, although this choice could be due to considerations of the alphabetical order. Under the letter "O", there is no listing for oedema (so obviously no cross-reference to edema). Interestingly, if we can rely on Google Ngram Viewer (n.d), edema and oedema were used about equally in AmE in 1900, around the time Kern's dictionary was made. While Kern's treatment of edema, oedema could be motivated, the same cannot be said for his handling of eon, aeon. The lexicographic treatment of eon, aeon is exactly the same as that of edema, oedema: under the letter "E" we have both spellings eon, aeon; under the letter "A" there is no listing (and hence no cross-reference). Google Ngram (n.d.) seems to indicate that aeon (in contrast with eon) was not a viable variant; at that time, it appears to have been used rarely in both BrE and AmE. It is possible that Kern, a medical doctor, knew the aeon spelling through his knowledge of Latin; his education both at a gymnasium in Ljubljana and at a seminary in Minnesota would have exposed him to Latin frequently. It is also possible that he was influenced by one or more monolingual dictionaries of that time. For example, Webster's New International Dictionary, 1st edition (Harris 1909), has the headword aeon as well as eon. In both places, the variant spelling is given and a full treatment of the meaning appears.⁵ Note that Kern's own treatment in his bilingual dictionary is more modern than that in the monolingual Webster's that gave equal treatment to aeon and eon.

As for esthetic, Kern lists it as a headword with an equivalent and with a cross-reference to aesthetic. At the lemma for aesthetic, the same equivalent is listed that was available at esthetic. However, at aesthetic, there is no cross-reference back to esthetic. Neither word has any label for BrE or AmE. This treatment could indicate that Kern considered aesthetic as the main variant (so that it did not need a cross-reference back to esthetic); apparently he considered esthetic to be important enough to list an equivalent in addition to the cross-reference to aesthetic. If this was indeed Kern's reasoning (which we cannot know), then Google Ngram

Viewer (n.d.) would seem to support that. The Ngram Viewer indicates that in both North America and Britain, the variant aesthetic has always been the more frequent spelling. Today, dictionaries in both North America and Britain list aesthetic as the main variant, though esthetic is included as the second variant or marked as North American.

While Kern was consistent in spelling the same word in the same way throughout the dictionary, he was not always consistent in his treatment of related phenomena of AmE/BrE spelling differences. It is not clear that he should have been consistent, since different lexical items, even with similar forms, can have different timelines for when a spelling variant begins to predominate. For example, many verbs and derivative nouns have -l- in BrE and -ll- in AmE; examples are enrol/enroll, enrolment/enrollment, fulfil/fulfill, fulfilment/fulfillment, and instal/install, instalment/installment. Below are the choices Kern made for the headwords in his English-Slovenian dictionary:

enroll

enrollment

fulfil

fulfilment

install

instal(l)ment

While some of Kern's choices follow AmE spelling (enroll, enrollment; install), some follow BrE (fulfil, fulfillment). The lemma instal(l)ment has both British and American spellings, but without comment. When we examine the frequency graphs of Google Ngram Viewer (n.d.), we discover that in the time frame in which Kern's dictionary was being created (1905-1919; cf. Javh-Kern 1937), each of the words above had somewhat different usage arcs. For example, the pair fulfill and fulfil, as well as the pair fulfillment and fulfilment were apparently used approximately equally in the American context from the early 1870s to around 1915, at which time fulfill and fulfillment began slowly to be used more frequently. Instalment and installment appear to have been on more or less equal footing until the mid1840s, with an increase in the use of installment from then on. This tells us that all of these variants (except instal) were circulating in usage during Kern's time; it would have been impossible for him to determine which ones were most frequent. Given this, it is not clear why Kern chose to put one l of instal(l)ment in parentheses.

 

6. Discussion and conclusions

6.1 Background and experience

Despite sustained investigation, many aspects of the background of our three dictionary authors remain obscure. This is unfortunate, because such information could shed light on what skill sets they possessed and how their knowledge and experiences motivated them to create their dictionaries and prepared them to do this successfully.

From what we have been able to determine, Fran/Frank Javh-Kern was the most educated of the three authors, with a gymnasium education in Ljubljana, and a seminary education in Minnesota followed by a degree in medicine. Kern was a practicing physician and a prominent member of the Cleveland, Ohio community (Javh-Kern 1937). In his later years, he taught college courses in Cleveland.⁶ In addition to Slovenian and English, Kern certainly knew German and Latin.

Silvester Kosutnik was the son of a teacher and a teacher himself, but like most teachers at that time probably did not receive education after secondary school. Kosutnik was also a prolific writer and translator into Slovenian. Notably, he translated Uncle Tom's Cabin into Slovenian - from a German version rather than the English original (Hladnik 1985; Trupej 2015). His translation work would have given him familiarity with both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries. Apart from Slovenian, he was familiar with English, French, German, Italian, and Serbo-Croatian (Hladnik 1983).

Viktor/Victor Kubelka's background is the most mysterious of the three.⁷He was born in Ljubljana, but no information about his formal education is available; he apparently did not study in the U.S. It appears that he knew German, Czech, and Croatian in addition to English and Slovenian. He worked as an inspector in the War Department for U.S. Military Intelligence during World War I. For a few years after the war he worked as a director of the Commercial Department of the Czechoslovak Consulate General; his father's native language was Czech. In sum, all three authors had vast experience with languages, Kern had higher education and Kosutnik and Kern pursued intellectual endeavors. All of the authors had the zeal to provide the necessary dictionary tools to help their compatriots - Slovenian immigrants or those getting ready to emigrate - master English.

As far as dictionary-writing is concerned, all three authors were outright amateurs as well as groundbreaking pioneers. None of them were linguists; despite their collective knowledge of many languages, they had no experience working with language analytically. During the time they were working on their dictionaries, there were simply no resources on English grammar, pronunciation, etc. written in Slovenian.⁸ So, they had to invent the wheel. First, they had to grasp what the proper explanations were for various language phenomena; once they had come up with an explanation, they had to discern how best to present it for their intended audience. For example, as non-linguists they had to describe the physical movements of the tongue during the pronunciation of different phonemes. Above, we gave a few examples of Kern's fairly successful descriptions. While he may have been less successful, Kubelka was certainly not lacking in energy, when he advises (in his 1912b Slovenian front matter, p. 26) how to deal with /5/:

... is pronounced if you push the tip of your tongue toward the upper teeth and try to pronounce ds. They are marked in this book by d and t.

For the various English phonemes, the authors had to ascertain which Slovenian words had the same or similar phonemes, so that they could draw parallels between the two languages. It is difficult today to fathom how they achieved what they did. The authors also had to learn and sometimes invent Slovenian linguistic terminology. While their efforts with grammar and grammatical terms will be addressed in a future article, even in the realm of pronunciation, they had to grapple with what kind of consonants are /θ/ and /o/, and what is a /w/ or an /j/ (the AmE alveolar approximant written as r) and how exactly these sounds work in the English language. These are concepts that linguists learn during their formal education and then, depending on their area of specialization, could end up studying over many years.

6.2 The state of the art

In terms of its level of professionalism, bilingual lexicography has always been at least a step or two behind monolingual lexicography, despite the fact that bilingual dictionaries existed first. Héja, Lipp and Prószéky (2023) maintain that, while the first bilingual wordlist appeared around 2400 BCE, only in the 1950s - well after Kubelka's, Kosutnik's and Kern's time - did real scientific discussion of bilingual lexicography begin. To the challenges faced by the monolingual lexicographer in how to discriminate meaning and present linguistic information cogently, the bilingual lexicographer must add the demand of juxtaposing the semantic units of two languages that never or rarely match in their equivalence. This requires a degree of thorough knowledge of both languages that usually does not reside within a single individual working on a bilingual dictionary. Bilingual dictionaries are always born in situations of language and cultural contact (cf. Béjoint 2016 and Fontenelle 2016) where the dire need outweighs the qualms of imperfection. If the lack of ideal qualifications for the job had prevented our three authors from creating their books for the benefit of the Slovenian immigrant population, as Voltaire said, the best would indeed have been the enemy of the good.

6.3 Understanding the target audience

Who was the target audience of our three dictionary makers? To answer this question, we must first understand the education and schooling that Slovenian immigrants were likely to have had in the home country. From December 1774 in the Hapsburg Monarchy (of which Slovenian territories were a part), primary school was obligatory for children aged six to 12.⁹ While it was not dictated by law, it was presupposed that the language of instruction would be German, with the understanding that pupils in Slovenian territories would need supplementary mother tongue support (Okolis 2008: 45). From 1809 to 1813, the Slovenian language was introduced in schools in some of the Slovenian territories (Okolis 2008: 51). As the 19th century progressed, the use of Slovenian as the language of instruction gained momentum in all of the Slovenian territories (Fedor 2017). In 1869, compulsory primary schooling was standardized and increased from six to eight years (Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, Republic of Austria, n.d.). While the territories that were inhabited by Slovenian speakers were more impoverished than other areas of the Hapsburg Monarchy, still we can surmise that most immigrants would have had a minimum of four years of primary education and would have been able to read, even if many of them did not use their literacy skills often. In this respect, they were similar to native-born Americans who likewise had high levels of literacy at this time (Lynch 2011).

All three of our dictionary authors knew their audience. Kosutnik never emigrated and had to have been (as the son of a teacher and a teacher himself) very familiar with the educational level of potential emigrants to the New World; we have already seen that he references "those layers of society for which this booklet is intended" (1912, p. 4). Kubelka immigrated to the U.S. as a young adult; while the exact year he arrived has yet to be determined, he was apparently in his early twenties - and thus had experienced the education system in Ljubljana firsthand (although we do not know whether he had any secondary education). Prior to immigration, Kern received both primary and secondary (gymnasium) education in Slovenian territories and then went on to receive higher education in the U.S. From the age of 16 he lived in the U.S. among Slovenian immigrants. He states in the introduction to his memoir: "I had an unusual opportunity to observe the course and development of Slovenian colonization in America and "[i]n my public activity the good of the Slovenian people here and in the old country was my main goal, only then my own benefit" (Javh-Kern 1937). While Kern was far from being a typical Slovenian immigrant of that time, there is no question that he knew his compatriots well.

Despite having knowledge of their audience, as amateur dictionary writers, our authors were not fully successful in designing books that would convey pronunciation and spelling information effectively. While their books were used - and treasured in the families of Slovenian immigrants - it is clear that their guidance would often have been obscure or completely opaque. As the examples above from the prefaces and front matter show, the authors did their best to explain pronunciation and demonstrated their own insight into pronunciation issues. However, most of the information they provided would not have been unusable even for astute and motivated learners. Of the three authors, Kubelka has the most information about pronunciation in his prefaces and front matter, and it is the least usable. Only Kern comments on the difference between AmE and BrE spelling in his (Slovenian-language) preface, but it is unlikely that this was a significant topic for his users.

It is not a great tragedy that the three authors toiled over prefaces and front matter that was, most likely, completely ignored. This has been the fate of most lexicographers everywhere, in all times. The more important question is whether the pronunciation and spelling guidance within the body of the actual dictionary was successful. To begin with pronunciation, it cannot be overemphasized how important it is for the non-native speaker. While native speakers do not think much about pronunciation, the non-native learner can be obsessed with it since a mispronunciation can render a person incomprehensible and cause complete communication failures. What is more, due to the historical nature of the English spelling system, pronunciation is simply not available to a language learner from a written text alone. Spelling is less important, as the Slovenian immigrants in the mines and the steel mills did not need to write much. What is more, in this era most average Americans, native and non-native speakers alike, were not aware that there were BrE and AmE variants.

How did the three authors do with the pronunciation guidance in their dictionaries? Our review must be mixed. All of them used the only thing available to them at that time, systems of respelling in a more phonetic manner. Apparently, Kubelka and Kosutnik invented their systems. The systems they created, due to these two authors' difficulty with some of the challenging sounds of English (Λ/, /o/, /θ/, /ei/, /ae/, /a/, /λ/, /ei/, etc.), could not provide fully effective guidance to users. In addition, as noted above, Kubelka and Kosutnik did not use their respelling systems consistently. On the other hand, Kubelka did his readers a service by his (unorthodox) use of pronunciation guides next to the equivalents in his two Slovenian-English dictionaries. This technique did not catch on in most bilingual dictionaries intended for encoding, but perhaps it should have.

Kern differs from Kubelka and Kosutnik in that his respelling system for pronunciation was either taken whole cloth or adapted from the respelling system in one of the early editions of the New Standard Dictionary. This was a good choice, given that Funk and Wagnalls dictionaries aimed to adhere to accurate phonetics. For this reason, Kern's system is the most consistent, so it might have been more useful to the Slovenian immigrants exposed to it.

Above we indicated that in terms of spelling choices, Kubelka (1904) was inconsistent, Kubelka (1912b) was consistent in representing AmE, and Kosutnik was consistent in representing BrE. We have noted that, of the four books examined, Kern's dictionary was the most professionally done. In terms of spelling, Kern was consistent overall and primarily used AmE variants. As we speculate above, when Kern does use BrE spellings, there is some (albeit limited) evidence that he does so in cases where the BrE variant was still widely circulating in the society along with an AmE variant.

6.4 Final musings

The dictionaries of Kubelka, Kosutnik and Kern (as well as other reference books of the Slovenian immigration to the U.S.), despite their flaws and inconsistencies, were of immense value to the population for whom they were intended. These books have not been forgotten. The descendants of Slovenian-American immigrants know these dictionaries or still have them in their families; they reside in libraries and museums in the U.S. and in Slovenia. They also live on in this ongoing project to document their lexicographic value and to augment the lexicographic knowledge base of our field. More work is needed for a full understanding of what the new bilingual Americans of the early 20th century thought about language and dictionaries.

 

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Slovenian Research Agency, for providing funding for the grants Slovarji in izkusnje Slovencev-emigrantov v Zdruzenih drzavah Amerike (konec 19. in zacetek 20. stoletja)/Dictionaries and the Slovenian Immigrant Experience in the United States (Late 19th, early 20th Century) [BI-US/22-24-042] and Stare besede, nove besede, novi svet: Zivljenje slovenskih leksikografov - priseljencev v ZDA/Old Words, New Words, New World: The Lives of Slovenian Immigrant Lexicographers in the U.S. [BI-US/22-24-030].

We also would like to thank those who assisted us during this project: Georgene Agnich, Lauren Baltz, Cynthia Mencin Barkowski, Jeffrey Dormish, Geraldine Hopkins, Rose Marie Macek Jisa, Lorraine M. Kaup, Laura Kortz, Tom Percic, April Sleyko, Deacon John P. Vidmar, Ph.D., and Mary Lou Deyak Voelk. To these very generous people, we say Vsem iz srca hvala! May your efforts to foster Slovenian culture in the U.S. continue.

 

Endnotes

1 This was reprinted in 1903 and 1908 with the title Anglescina brez ucitelja v slovenskem jeziku. Pomocna knjiga za potovalce v Ameriko [English without a Teacher in the Slovenian Language. A Handbook for Travelers to America]. The 1908 edition is available on Google Books.
2 See Kalc et al. (2020) concerning the years of Slovenian immigration to the U.S., 1890-1914.
3 The earliest German-English lexicographic source is a six-language bilingual dictionary published in the first half of the 16th century, and there are other German-English sources as well (McLelland 2018). By the 19th century, as was the case with other language pairs in Europe, the number of English-German bilingual dictionaries had increased. However, it is doubtful that our authors were consulting these or other dictionaries in early 20th-century America.
4 Slovensko-angleski razgovori, Slovenian-English Interpreter (1912a); this work is not analyzed here.
5 Later editions of Webster's New International Dictionary (2nd edition, Neilson 1934 and 3rd edition, Gove 1961) continued to have full entries under aeon as well as under eon.
6 Personal communication, Deacon John P. Vidmar, Ph.D., Slovenian Catholic Mission, Lemont, Illinois.
7 Information about Viktor Kubelka was gleaned from research on Ancestry.com and at the Slovenian Genealogy Society, International, Inc. in Cleveland, Ohio.
8 The first readily available grammar (with pronunciation explanation) would have been the immigrant Jeram's English grammar in Slovenian (1895). We can be certain that Kern was familiar with this book (see his memoir, Javh-Kern 1937), but we do not know whether the other authors knew or used it.
9 The government of Austria (under Empress Maria Theresa) instituted a requirement for six years of primary education (Cvrcek 2020).

 

References

Note: Citations of Kern are listed as they appear in the respective publication, as Kern or as Javh-Kern.

A. Dictionaries

Funk, Isaac K. (Ed.). 1908. A Standard Dictionary of the English Language. New York/London: Funk & Wagnalls Company.         [ Links ]

Funk, Isaac K. (Ed.). 1913. New Standard Dictionary of the English Language. New York/London: Funk & Wagnalls Company.         [ Links ]

Gove, Philip Babcock (Ed.). 1961. Webster's Third New International Dictionary. Third edition. Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam Company.         [ Links ]

Harris, William Torrey (Ed.). 1909. Webster's New International Dictionary. First edition. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster Inc.         [ Links ]

Kern, Frank J. 1919. A Complete Pronouncing Dictionary of the English and Slovene Languages for General Use. Popoln anglesko-slovenski besednjak z anglesko izgovarjavo. Cleveland, Ohio: Tisk ameriske domovine. (Kern 1919)        [ Links ]

Kosutnik, Silvester. 1912. Rocni slovensko-angleski in anglesko slovenski slovar: Zlasti namenjen izseljencem v Ameriko. Ljubljana: Anton Turk. (Kosutnik 1912)        [ Links ]

Kubelka, Victor J. 1904. Slovensko-angleski zepni recnik v olajsavo naucenja obeh jezikov. Slovenian-English Pocket Dictionary to Facilitate the Study of Both Languages. New York: Victor J. Kubelka. (Kubelka 1904) https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t4qj8p026&view=1up&seq        [ Links ]

Kubelka, Viktor J. 1912a. Slovensko-angleski razgovori. Slovenian-English Interpreter. New York: Press of Stettiner Bros. (Kubelka 1912a) https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433021125889        [ Links ]

Kubelka, Viktor J. 1912b. Slovensko-angleska Slovnica, Tolmac, Spisovnik in Navodilo za Naturalizacijo. Anglesko-Slovenski in Slovensko-Angleski Slovar. Slovenian-English Grammar Interpreter, Letterwriter and Information on Naturalization. English-Slovenian and Slovenian-English Dictionary. First edition. New York: Viktor J. Kubelka. (Kubelka 1912b)        [ Links ]

Merriam-Webster. n.d. Is it 'Autumn' or 'Fall'? Why Does this Season Have Two Vastly Different Names? https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/autumn-vs-fall [6 July 2023].

Neilson, William Allan (Ed.). 1934. Webster's New International Dictionary. Second edition. Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam Company.         [ Links ]

B. Other literature

Adams, Michael. 2015. Language Ideologies and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Evidence from Motive, Structure, and Design. Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 36: 17-46.         [ Links ]

Anonymous. 1895. Anglescina brez ucitelja. Pomocna knjiga za izseljence. Ljubljana: Josip Pavlin.         [ Links ]

Anonymous. 1903, 1908. Anglescina brez ucitelja v slovenskem jeziku. Pomocna knjiga za potovalce v Ameriko. Ljubljana: Josip Pavlin. https://books.google.com/books?id=ksWCvwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=sl#v=onepage&q&f=false        [ Links ]

Bajt, Drago (Ed.). 1985. France Preseren v prevodih. Zbornik Drustva slovenskih knjizevnih prevajalcev 8/9. Ljubljana: Drustvo slovenskih knjizevnih prevajalcev.         [ Links ]

Béjoint, Henri. 2010. The Lexicography of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.         [ Links ]

Béjoint, Henri. 2016. Dictionaries for General Users: History and Development; Current Issues. Durkin, Philip (Ed.). 2016: 7-24.

Cvrcek, Tomás. 2020. Schooling under Control: The Origins of Public Education in Imperial Austria 1769-1869. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.         [ Links ]

Durkin, Philip (Ed.). 2016. The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.         [ Links ]

Engelberg, Stefan, Heidrun Kämper and Petra Storjohann. (Eds.). 2018. Wortschatz: Theorie, Empirie, Dokumentation. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.         [ Links ]

Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, Republic of Austria. n.d. History of the Austrian School System. https://www.bmbwf.gv.at/en/Topics/school/school_syst/hist_school_syst.html [12 July 2023].

Fedor, Helen. 2017. 19th-century Slovenian Primers and Readers. Library of Congress Blogs, 30 January 2017. https://blogs.loc.gov/international-collections/2017/01/19th-century-slovenian-primers-and-readers/#:~:text=The%20use%20of%20Slovenian%20in,creation%20of%20Sunday%2Donly%20schools [12 July 2023].

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