Wilhelm Vocabulary
- Wilhelm Vocabulary
Data Format
The data that serves wilhelmlang.com. They are written in YAML format, because
- it is machine-readable so that it can be consumed quickly in data pipelines
- it is human-readable and, thus, easy to read and modify
- it supports multi-lines value which is very handy for language data
Data Pipeline
How Data (Vocabulary) is Stored in a Graph Database
Why Graph Database
Graph data representation assumes universal connectivity among world entities. This applies pretty well to the realm of languages. Multilanguage learners have already seen that Indo-European languages are similar in many aspects. The similarities not only signify the historical facts about Philology but also surface a great opportunity for multilanguage learners to take advantages of them and study much more efficiently. What's missing is connecting the dots using Graph Databases that visually presents these vastly enlightening links between the related languages in a natural way.
Definition
The meaning of a word is called the definition
. A term has a natural relationship to its definition(s). For example,
the German noun "Ecke" has at least 4 definitions:
Inflections
Indo-European languages are mostly inflected. The way inflections are encoded are documented for each language separately:
Languages
German
YAML Schema
vocabulary:
- term: string
definition: list
declension/conjugation: application-specific table
The
conjugation
is the inflection paradigm for a German verb anddeclension
the inflection for nouns and adjectives. Only one of the two is present for a term.The type of the word can be inferred using the following rule
term
with a definite article of der/die/das signifies a noun. For instance- term: die Wissenschaft definition: the Science
Those with
conjugation
field denotes a verb; its definition also begins with an indefinite form, i.e. "to ..."The rests are explicitly stated in the
definition
field. For example,- term: ob definition: - (conj.) if - (conj.) whether
means "ob" is a conjunction in this case and
- term: denn definition: - (adv.) then, thus - (conj.) because
tells that "denn" can be adverb or conjunction
The parenthesized value at the beginning of each
definition
item played an un-ignorable role: it is the label of the relationship betweenterm
anddefinition
in graph database loaded by Wilhelm SDK. For example, both German words
- term: denn definition: - (adv.) then, thus - (conj.) because
and
- term: nรคmlich definition: - (adj.) same - (adv.) namely - (adv.) because
can mean "because" acting as different types. This is visualized as follows:
Visualzing synonyms this way presents a big advantage to human brain who is exceedingly good at memorizing patterns
German Declension
The declension table employees an application-specific YAML that looks like the following:
- term: ein
definition: (article) a, an
declension:
- ["", masculine, feminine, neuter, plural]
- [nominative, ein, eine, ein, N/A ]
- [genitive, eines, einer, eines, N/A ]
- [dative, einem, einer, einem, N/A ]
- [accusative, einen, eine, ein, N/A ]
The declension table above is equivalent to
masculine | feminine | neuter | plural | |
---|---|---|---|---|
nominative | ein | eine | ein | N/A |
genitive | eines | einer | eines | N/A |
dative | einem | einer | einem | N/A |
accusative | einen | eine | ein | N/A |
- A list under
declension
is a table row- All rows have the same number of columns
- Each element of the list corresponds to a table cell
The declension tables for all nouns are sourced from Wiktionary
Noun Declension Templates
Masculine
declension:
- ["", singular, singular, singular, plural, plural]
- ["", indef., def., noun, def., noun ]
- [nominative, ein, der, โโโโโโโโ, die, โโโโโโ]
- [genitive, eines, des, โโโโโโโโ, der, โโโโโโ]
- [dative, einem, dem, โโโโโโโโ, den, โโโโโโ]
- [accusative, einen, den, โโโโโโโโ, die, โโโโโโ]
Feminine
declension:
- ["", singular, singular, singular, plural, plural]
- ["", indef., def., noun, def., noun ]
- [nominative, eine, die, โโโโโโโโ, die, โโโโโโ]
- [genitive, einer, der, โโโโโโโโ, der, โโโโโโ]
- [dative, einer, der, โโโโโโโโ, den, โโโโโโ]
- [accusative, eine, die, โโโโโโโโ, die, โโโโโโ]
Neuter
declension:
- ["", singular, singular, singular, plural, plural]
- ["", indef., def., noun, def., noun ]
- [nominative, ein, das, โโโโโโโโ, die, โโโโโโ]
- [genitive, eines, des, โโโโโโโโ, der, โโโโโโ]
- [dative, einem, dem, โโโโโโโโ, den, โโโโโโ]
- [accusative, ein, das, โโโโโโโโ, die, โโโโโโ]
German (Attributive) Adjective Declension
- Predicate adjectives (e.g. kalt in mir ist kalt "I am cold") are undeclined
- An adjective can both be predicative (a brave boy) or attributive (The boy is brave). Only attributive adjectives are declined.
There are 3 types of declensions for German adjectives
Each type bears a separate declension table. To master German adjectives, we will need to memorize all of the three.
There is also adjective comparison which throws in potentially 6 more tables. But the rules for comparative and superlative forms are quite universal so we ignore the two and focus only on the positive form, which is the basic form of the adjective.
The template of the adjective is as follows:
declension:
- strong declension (without article)
- ["", singular, singular, singular, plural]
- ["", masculine, feminine, neuter, "" ]
- [nominative, โโโโโโโโโ, โโโโโโโโ, โโโโโโโโ, โโโโโโ]
- [genitive, โโโโโโโโโ, โโโโโโโโ, โโโโโโโโ, โโโโโโ]
- [dative, โโโโโโโโโ, โโโโโโโโ, โโโโโโโโ, โโโโโโ]
- [accusative, โโโโโโโโโ, โโโโโโโโ, โโโโโโโโ, โโโโโโ]
- weak declension (with definite article)
- ["", singular, singular, singular, plural]
- ["", masculine, feminine, neuter, "" ]
- [nominative, der โโโโโ, die โโโโ, das โโโ, die โโ]
- [genitive, des โโโโโ, der โโโโ, des โโโ, der โโ]
- [dative, dem โโโโโ, der โโโโ, dem โโโ, den โโ]
- [accusative, den โโโโโ, die โโโโ, das โโโ, die โโ]
- mixed declension (with indefinite article)
- ["", singular, singular, singular, plural ]
- ["", masculine, feminine, neuter, "" ]
- [nominative, ein โโโโโ, eine โโโ, ein โโโ, (keine) โโโโโ]
- [genitive, eines โโโ, einer โโ, eines โ, (keiner) โโโโโ]
- [dative, einem โโโ, einer โโ, einem โ, (keinen) โโโโโ]
- [accusative, einen โโโ, eine โโโ, ein โโโ, (keine) โโโโโ]
Here is an example of the adjective declension for "unterschiedlich":
- term: unterschiedlich
definition: (adj.) different
declension:
- strong declension (without article):
- ["", singular, singular, singular, plural ]
- ["", masculine, feminine, neuter, "" ]
- [nominative, unterschiedlicher, unterschiedliche, unterschiedliches, unterschiedliche ]
- [genitive, unterschiedlichen, unterschiedlicher, unterschiedlichen, unterschiedlicher]
- [dative, unterschiedlichem, unterschiedlicher, unterschiedlichem, unterschiedlichen]
- [accusative, unterschiedlichen, unterschiedliche, unterschiedliches, unterschiedliche ]
- weak declension (with definite article):
- ["", singular, singular, singular, plural ]
- ["", masculine, feminine, neuter, "" ]
- [nominative, der unterschiedliche, die unterschiedliche, das unterschiedliche, die unterschiedlichen]
- [genitive, des unterschiedlichen, der unterschiedlichen, des unterschiedlichen, der unterschiedlichen]
- [dative, dem unterschiedlichen, der unterschiedlichen, dem unterschiedlichen, den unterschiedlichen]
- [accusative, den unterschiedlichen, die unterschiedliche, das unterschiedliche, die unterschiedlichen]
- mixed declension (with indefinite article):
- ["", singular, singular, singular, plural ]
- ["", masculine, feminine, neuter, "" ]
- [nominative, ein unterschiedlicher, eine unterschiedliche, ein unterschiedliches, (keine) unterschiedlichen ]
- [genitive, eines unterschiedlichen, einer unterschiedlichen, eines unterschiedlichen, (keiner) unterschiedlichen]
- [dative, einem unterschiedlichen, einer unterschiedlichen, einem unterschiedlichen, (keinen) unterschiedlichen]
- [accusative, einen unterschiedlichen, eine unterschiedliche, ein unterschiedliches, (keine) unterschiedlichen ]
The declension tables for all adjectives are sourced from Wiktionary
German Conjugation
There are 3 persons, 2 numbers, and 4 moods (indicative, conditional, imperative and subjunctive) to consider in conjugation. There are 6 tenses in German: the present and past are conjugated, and there are four compound tenses. There are two categories of verbs in German: weak and strong^1. In addition, strong verbs are grouped into 7 "classes"
The conjugation table of German verb on Wiktionary is hard to interpret for German beginner. It does, however, presents a very good Philology reference. For example, it tells us which of the 7 "classes" a strong verb belongs to. We, therefore, leave the Wiktionary links to the conjugation table of that verb for data processing in the future, for example,
- term: aufwachsen
definition: to grow up
conjugation: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aufwachsen#Conjugation
and advise user to employ a much more practical method to learn daily conjugation as follows. We take "aufwachsen" as an example.
I'm not advertising for any organizations. I'm simply sharing good resources.
Netzverb Dictionary is the best German dictionary targeting the vocabulary inflections. Search for "aufwachsen" and we will see much more intuitive conjugation tables listed.
This pretty much serves our needs, but what makes Netzverb unpenetrable by other alternatives is that every verb comes with
A printable version that looks much better than the browser's Control+P export
- There is also a "Sentences with German verb aufwachsen" section with a link that offer a fruitful number of conjugated examples getting us familiar with the inflections of the verb
An on-the-fly generated flashcard sheet which allows us to make a better usage of our random free time
A YouTube video that offers audios of almost every conjugated form, which helps with pronunciations a lot
- It is, thus, strongly recommended to study the conjugation through Netzverb Dictionary separately
- Netzverb Dictionary, however, lacks a programmable API. Wiktionary has a good one instead. This is why we left the conjugation link to Wiktionary for now and it will definitely serve us well as I'm trying to make it happen
Ancient Greek
Wiktionary and Logos Bible Study Platform are the best sources as pronunciation guides. Due to the scarcity of the audio resources among AG lerners, a separate project has been initiated to expand the audio practice materials by AI
Ancient Greek is still an under-attesting language, what that means is no textbook is "complete". One will frequently see a certain grammar does not apply to or some inflections are missing for a word. Therefore, the best strategy to make inflection data of Ancient Greek is to crawl the entire inflection table of every word. This would be impractical manually but practical automatically using wilhelm-python-sdk. The sections below will make references to the certain parts of SDK.
Diacritic Mark Convention
We employ the following 3 diacritic signs only in vocabulary:
- the acute (ฮฌ)
- the circumflex (แพถ), and
- the grave (แฝฐ)
In fact, it is called the medium diacritics and the same convention used in Loeb Classical Library prints from Harvard. Notice that, however, the commonly sourced Wiktionary uses full diacritics, including the breve diacritic mark; we don't do that.
Greek YAML Schema
Greek Noun
The vocabulary entry for each noun consists of its nominative and genitive forms, an article which indicates the noun's gender, and the English meaning. For example.
- term: ฯฮญฯฮฝฮท ฯฮญฯฮฝฮทฯ, แผก
definition:
- art,
- skill,
- craft
the vocabulary entry above consists of the following 4 items:
- ฯฮญฯฮฝฮท: nominative singular
- ฯฮญฯฮฝฮทฯ: genitive singular
- แผก: nominative feminine singular of the article, which shows that the gender of the noun is feminine
- a list of English meanings of the word
The declension of the entry is not shown because to decline any noun, we can take the genitive singular, remove the genitive singular ending to get the stem, and then add the proper set of endings to the stem based on its declension class[^2].
[^2]: Greek: An Intensive Course, 2nd Revised Edition, Hansen & Quinn, p.20
For example, to decline ฯฮญฯฮฝฮท ฯฮญฯฮฝฮทฯ, แผก, art, take the genitive singular ฯฮญฯฮฝฮทฯ, remove the genitive singular ending -ฮทฯ, and add the appropriate endings to the stem which gives following paradigm:
Case | Singular | Plural |
---|---|---|
nominative | ฯฮญฯฮฝฮท | ฯฮญฯฮฝฮฑฮน |
genitive | ฯฮญฯฮฝฮทฯ | ฯฮตฯฮฝแฟถฮฝ |
dative | ฯฮญฯฮฝแฟ | ฯฮญฯฮฝฮฑฮนฯ |
accusative | ฯฮญฯฮฝฮทฮฝ | ฯฮญฯฮฝแพฑฯ |
vocative | ฯฮญฯฮฝฮท | ฯฮญฯฮฝฮฑฮน |
Greek Verb
The Greek verb has 6 principal parts. All 6 must be learned whenever a new verb is encountered:
- (first person singular) present indicative active
- (first person singular) future indicative active
- (first person singular) aorist indicative active
- (first person singular) perfect indicative active
- (first person singular) perfect indicative passive
- (first person singular) aorist indicative passive
The minimum number of forms which one must know in order to generate all possible forms of a verb are called the principal parts of that verb.
From the 6 forms above, various verb forms (i.e. stems & endings) can be derived by rules[^4]
[^4]: Greek: An Intensive Course, 2nd Revised Edition, Hansen & Quinn, p.44
In practice, however, obtaining precise and complete principal parts for some verbs has been proven to be impossible. While the best efforts have been made for reconstructing the complete principal parts, we also put a link to the Wiktionary of each verb for wilhelm-python-sdk, which will dynamically load the complete conjugation tables into graph database.
What's also being loaded are the reconstructed principal parts with a list of references that validate the reconstruction.
In conclusion, the entry of a verb, thus, has the form of:
- term: string
definition: list
conjugation:
wiktionary: string
principal parts:
- ["", Attic, (Possibly other dialects)]
- [(first person singular) present indicative active, โโโโโ, ... ]
- [(first person singular) future indicative active, โโโโโ, ... ]
- [(first person singular) aorist indicative active, โโโโโ, ... ]
- [(first person singular) perfect indicative active, โโโโโ, ... ]
- [(first person singular) perfect indicative passive, โโโโโ, ... ]
- [(first person singular) aorist indicative passive, โโโโโ, ... ]
references: list
For example:
- term: ฮปฮญฮณฯ
definition:
- to say, speak
- to pick up
conjugation:
wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ฮปฮญฮณฯ#Verb_2
principal parts:
- ["", Attic , Koine ]
- [(first person singular) present indicative active, ฮปฮญฮณฯ , ฮปฮญฮณฯ ]
- [(first person singular) future indicative active, ฮปฮญฮพฯ , แผฯแฟถ ]
- [(first person singular) aorist indicative active, แผฮปฮตฮพฮฑ , ฮตแผถฯฮฟฮฝ/ฮตแผถฯฮฑ ]
- [(first person singular) perfect indicative active, (missing), ฮตแผดฯฮทฮบฮฑ ]
- [(first person singular) perfect indicative passive, ฮปฮญฮปฮตฮณฮผฮฑฮน , ฮปฮญฮปฮตฮณฮผฮฑฮน ]
- [(first person singular) aorist indicative passive, แผฮปฮญฯฮธฮทฮฝ , แผฯฯฮญฮธฮทฮฝ/แผฯฯฮฎฮธฮทฮฝ]
references:
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ฮปฮญฮณฯ#Inflection
- http://atticgreek.org/downloads/allPPbytypes.pdf
- https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0264/ch25.xhtml
- https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/lego
- https://koine-greek.fandom.com/wiki/ฮฮญฮณฯ
Latin
vocabulary:
- term: string
definition: list
Classical Hebrew (Coming Soon)
The vocabulary is presented to help read and understand Biblical Hebrew. A complementary audio helps well with the pronunciation.
Korean
ไธญๅฝไบบๅญฆไน ้ฉ่ฏญๆๅ
ๅคฉไผๅฟ๏ผๅ ไน้ฉ่ฏญๆฌ่บซไนๆฏไธ้จ็ธๅฝ็ฎๅ็่ฏญ่จ๏ผๆไปฅ่ฟ้ๅฐ่ฏญๆณๅ่ฏๆฑๅๅนถๅจไธ่ตท๏ผ
ๆฏไธ้กนไนๅช็ฑ term
๏ผ้ฉ๏ผๅ definition
๏ผไธญ๏ผ็ปๆ๏ผ
vocabulary:
- term: string
definition: list of strings
example:
- Korean: ์ ๊ฐ ์๋ฌด๋ ด ๊ทธ์ชฝ ํธ์ ์๊ฒ ์ด์
Chinese: ๆๆ ่ฎบๅฆไฝ้ฝไผ็ซๅจไฝ ่ฟ่พน
- Korean: ...
Chinese: ...
ไธ็จ่ดนๅคชๅคๅๅคซ่ฎฐ็ข็ฎๅ็่ฏญๆณๅ่ฏๆฑ๏ผๅฉไธ็ๅฐฑๆฏๆฟ้ฉ่ฏญๅญๅนๅงไธๅ็ปไน ๅฌ่ฏด่ฏปๅๆขๆใexample
ไธญ็ไพๅฅๅๆฅ่ช้ฉๅฝๆฌๅ่ฏญๆ
้ฉ่ฏญไธๅฑไบๆฑ่่ฏญ็ณป๏ผๅ ๅ ถๆๅฑ่ฏญ็ณป้ๅธธ็ญๅฐ๏ผๆ ๆณๅๅ ถๅฎ่ฏญ่จไบง็่ถณๅคๅ ณ่๏ผๅ ๆญคๅ ถๆฐๆฎๆๆถไธ่ขซๅญๅ ฅๅพๆฐๆฎๅบ่ฟ่กๆฐๆฎๅๆ
License
The use and distribution terms for wilhelm-vocabulary are covered by the Apache License, Version 2.0.