No Dictionaries for Shakespere

It's hard to imagine how someone with an extensive vocabulary could have acquired it without the use of dictionaries, but that is exactly what the ole' Bard did. You see, English dictionaries in Elizabethean times simply did not exist. The English dictionary, the widely used list of words arranged in alphabetical order that many of us cherish, is really a modern invention in the English language.

As translators, dictionaries are our bread and butter and I can't imagine working without them anymore that I can imagine attempting to write a piece of Shakesperean prose without one.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century other languages were well under way in establishing a fixed and formal structure to the language, most notably French and German. English was far behind and had no unified consensus on basic concepts as spelling. This presented a very real challenge for a language that was becoming of age as England expanded it's global reach. English was destined to become the international language, but to do so it needed to define the language in lexicographical terms.

One of the first steps in this direction were the first attempts to publish lists of pompous words "for the benefit and help of ladies, gentlemen and any other unskilful persons" as the author of the early dictionary, A Table Alphabeticall… of hard unusual English Word, wrote.

The understanding of what a dictionary is, as we view it today, had a long way to go. More of that in the next installment. Meantime, as a Spanish to English translator, I am grateful for bilingual dictionaries.