On the current state of Outlier and etymology dictionaries

[Tomsima]

I've noticed in the last year or two that Outlier's business model seems to have shifted away from academic etymology and towards classical Chinese education. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it has made me a little disappointed to see the dictionary fall into a state of neglect.

 

An example of this occured in a conversation with a Chinese colleague today. I was attempting to defend the Defrancis position and used 日月 明 / 囧月 明 as the classic example. As I didn't have access to Defrancis' book, I turned to Outlier for support, as I was pretty certain 說文新證 supported the 囧 argument and would probably be the source for this entry. Outlier indeed cited p551 as evidence, but it presents 日 'sun' as contributing to meaning, with only an accompanying statement 'this is a reinterpretation of the character’s original form' to qualify. I found this entry to be oversimplified and also somewhat misleading, and this has unfortunately come to be my experience with Outlier.

 

I checked 說文新證 when I got home, and it specifically states 囧月 as the leading argument. Outlier classifies 日 as a 'meaning component', but the meaning given, 'bright' is different from the citation (which suggests earlier 'window', making it a 'form component' according to Outlier's criteria, which then later comes to suggest the meaning 'bright'). The original source also classifies this as a sound component. Kroll gives MC kjwaengX for 囧 and mjaeng for 明, showing correlation on this front. I have Outlier 'Expert' edition installed (and as far as I can tell have no way of checking if 明 is an 'expert' entry or not) but this entry falls short of academic needs, particularly disappointing when the character in question is so common (I think it was even in the first round of adverts for the dictionary). I presume Outlier has made a statement regarding its shift away from academic etymology. I'm certainly not trying to criticise John and Ash, if anything I'm missing the good old days when we were getting detailed, well-referenced research in updates

 

For those also awaiting outlier dictionary updates and corrections: these days my etymology references are directly sourced from 說文新證 or from 字源, 汉字源流字典 etc. The latter two are easily accessible through the comprehensive 以观书法 dictionary app, which I can strongly recommend. Unfortunately these dictionaries are all in Chinese, so perhaps not so useful for sharing with learners.

[OneEye]

Maybe I can clarify a few things.

 

I wouldn't say we've shifted towards classical Chinese education. It's more that we've shifted towards online courses, as those (and not just the classical Chinese courses) have been our primary revenue drivers for some time now. Ash is running a spoken Chinese course right now, I'm finishing up a course this week on how to read cursive (行草書), we have a course on Chinese literature starting soon (taught by Brendan O'Kane), I taught a course on the history and archaeology of early China, we're working on putting together courses on Chinese philosophy and art history, plus a course on how to read the newspaper in Chinese, among others. We're aiming for a good mix of language and "cultural" courses in the long run.

 

We also haven't moved away from doing the dictionary. More accurately, we couldn't make a living selling just the dictionary and character courses, so we've had to expand our offerings. This, of course, necessitates us slowing down a bit on the dictionary, but it also allows us to keep working on it rather than having to pack it in and find "regular" jobs.

 

We're working on getting other people to teach courses for us, both because 1) there are only so many subjects the two of us are qualified to teach in the first place (and we'd like to offer as big a variety as possible), and because 2) it will free us up to do more work on the dictionary. Teaching these courses is fun and rewarding, but it also takes a lot of time.

 

It's been about 10 months since the last dictionary update. That's a bit longer in between updates than usual for us, but not too much so. I think "a state of neglect" is a bit overstated. ?

 

There is a dictionary update coming soon though, hopefully by the end of this month. We're proofreading the entries now. It will have about 500 new Essentials entries and around 80 new Expert entries.

 

Speaking of Essentials and Expert entries, the type of information you seem to be looking for in the Essentials entry (detailed explanations of the history/origin/evolution of the character) is only found in Expert entries unless it's essential to include it in the main entry for some reason. That sort of info is not essential for the vast majority of learners. You said it yourself—"academic needs." That sort of thing goes into the Expert entries by definition.

 

That doesn't mean we're not doing detailed research on the characters. It means we're selective about what we include in the main (Essentials) entry because the dictionary is for learners first and foremost, not for academics.

 

The 日 in 明 does give a meaning in the modern form. That's all most people need to know—the corruption from 囧 falls into the category of "interesting info" rather than "must know."

 

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and as far as I can tell have no way of checking if 明 is an 'expert' entry or not

 

To check if any character has an Expert entry, just scroll to the bottom of the entry and look for "Expert Info." Tap "Learn more" and you'll be taken to the Expert entry. You can see which characters have Expert entries on this page: https://www.outlier-linguistics.com/pages/dictionary-status

 

明 doesn't currently have an Expert entry, but it will in the forthcoming update. Here's what that will look like:

 

 

On 8/9/2023 at 2:49 AM, Tomsima said:

these days my etymology references are directly sourced from 說文新證

 

Excellent.

 

On 8/9/2023 at 2:49 AM, Tomsima said:

or from 字源, 汉字源流字典 etc.

 

Be careful with the former, but it can be very good. The quality of the entries tends to vary depending on who wrote that particular entry (listed underneath each entry).

 

I wouldn't bother with 汉字源流字典, to be honest. I think we cite it once in our dictionary, for 睬, but only because there were no other reliable sources for that character (likely because it was formed quite late). The author is way too eager to force semantic value onto sound components, and often does a lot of mental gymnastics to get there. 

 

On 8/9/2023 at 2:49 AM, Tomsima said:

The latter two are easily accessible through the comprehensive 以观书法 dictionary app

 

This app is awesome. We've been using it a lot in the cursive course. I can't remember if I got it due to your recommendation previously or if it was someone else, but if it was you, thank you!

[vellocet]

On 8/9/2023 at 3:27 PM, OneEye said:

the type of information you seem to be looking for in the Essentials entry (detailed explanations of the history/origin/evolution of the character) is only found in Expert entries unless it's essential to include it in the main entry for some reason. That sort of info is not essential for the vast majority of learners. You said it yourself—"academic needs." That sort of thing goes into the Expert entries by definition.

 

Hear, hear! Well-said.

 

Especially once you realize how many experts there are out there vs. the number of learners. A thousand to one?  Higher?

[Tomsima]

Very much looking forward to the updates, thanks for sharing. Work on projects like the Outlier dictionary isn't just about how many experts are using it today, it is also an investment over time for learners who will come to be interested in future. When I first bought the dictionary I would not have called myself an 'expert' by any stretch of the imagination, but it was one of the key things that guided my reading into the area of Chinese historical phonetics.

 

I would say the expert entries are inspiring and push the Chinese language learning community to go deeper and further than previously possible. The fact that the expert entries are in English and presented in the way that they are also seems to underline that they are intended to serve as a bridge into Chinese historical linguistics for intermediate learners.

 

Following on from your reply, would it then be fair to say that 'Outlier Linguistics' is intending to reorient long term as a Chinese education company, rather than pursuing a not-for-profit foundation/project model? If so, what might the future of research activity look like? Is it going to be sidelined, as it is now, indefinitely? I always hoped things would develop into something like an 'Outlier Dictionary Project', similar to what happened with the 'Chinese Text Project', especially based on how early advertising leant heavily on academics like Victor Mair.

 

[OneEye]

 

On 8/11/2023 at 5:49 PM, Tomsima said:

The fact that the expert entries are in English and presented in the way that they are also seems to underline that they are intended to serve as a bridge into Chinese historical linguistics for intermediate learners.

 

The dictionary has been very much aimed at learners since the beginning, and we don't have any agenda regarding getting people into historical linguistics. It's more like, "we know people will find this kind of info interesting (whether they intend to dig any further or not), so we're providing the information in an easy-to-digest format." 

 

On 8/11/2023 at 5:49 PM, Tomsima said:

would it then be fair to say that 'Outlier Linguistics' is intending to reorient long term as a Chinese education company, rather than pursuing a not-for-profit foundation/project model?

 

We've been a for-profit company from the very beginning. We've never said otherwise, so I'm not sure what gave you that impression.

 

On 8/11/2023 at 5:49 PM, Tomsima said:

If so, what might the future of research activity look like? Is it going to be sidelined, as it is now, indefinitely?

 

Again, it's not sidelined, it's just a bit slower. We're going to continue writing expert entries for the dictionary until we have ~4000 of them. That will necessitate hiring researchers to work on it at some point, because of the amount of work involved.

 

Other research activities...Ash is presenting a paper at a phonology conference in Taiwan a week from now. He published a paper in 中國文字 late last year and submitted another paper to a paleography journal recently. We have other plans for the future, but nothing I can go into detail about right now.

 

On 8/11/2023 at 5:49 PM, Tomsima said:

I always hoped things would develop into something like an 'Outlier Dictionary Project', similar to what happened with the 'Chinese Text Project', especially based on how early advertising leant heavily on academics like Victor Mair.

 

I'm not sure what you mean. Open source, the way Chinese Text Project is? We've said from the very beginning that we don't intend to do that. We are, however, trying to license the dictionary data for inclusion in other apps.

[Tomsima]

Thanks for addressing my points, very much looking forward to seeing where you and Ash take things in future.