William Whitaker's Words is a

computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to Execution (computing), execute. It is one component of software, which also includes software documentation, documentation and other intangibl ...

that parses the

inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

conjugation Conjugation or conjugate may refer to: Linguistics *Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form *Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language Mathematics *Complex conjugation, the change o ...

of a given

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

word entered by the user, and also translates the

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often bel ...

into English. Conversely, given a basic English word, the program can output a Latin translation, generally with several possible Latin alternatives, although the database of translatable English words is not comprehensive. The software, written in Ada, is free for download but can be used online through several different hosts as well. This program has gained popularity among Latinists because of its simple interface, high coverage of the Latin lexicon and mostly accurate results. Nevertheless, the user has to check the results, since ''WORDS'' uses a set of rules based on natural

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed. Prefixes, like other affixes, can b ...

ation,

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

ation,

declension In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence by way of an inflection. Declension may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and det ...

and

to determine the possibility of an entry. As a consequence of this approach of analysing the structure of words, there is no guarantee that these words were ever used in Latin

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

speech Speech is the use of the human voice as a medium for language. Spoken language combines vowel and consonant sounds to form units of meaning like words, which belong to a language's lexicon. There are many different intentional speech acts, suc ...

, even if the program finds a possible meaning to a given word. A few years after the original author's death, the software became the subject of digital preservation efforts.

Coverage

The dictionary consists of about 39,000 entries, which would result in hundreds of thousands of variations, counting declensions and conjugations. Additionally, the dictionary contains prefixes and suffixes. In comparison, the

Oxford Latin Dictionary The ''Oxford Latin Dictionary'' (or ''OLD'') is the standard English lexicon of Classical Latin, compiled from sources written before AD 200. Begun in 1933, it was published in fascicles between 1968 and 1982; a lightly revised second edition ...

, considered to be the most complete Latin

lexicon A lexicon (plural: lexicons, rarely lexica) is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Greek word () ...

published in the English language, has about 34,000 entries, excluding proper names.ND.edu
/ref> The Oxford Latin Dictionary has fewer entries because it only contains entries from

Classical Latin Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a Literary language, literary standard language, standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It formed parallel to Vulgar Latin around 75 BC out of Old Latin ...

, whereas WORDS contains words from many time periods.

Parsing process

For instance, given the Latin

verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

form ''amābantur'', WORDS analyzes it as: amābantur = am + (ā + ba + nt + ur), where *am = amo, amare, amavi, amatus (English ''to

love Love is a feeling of strong attraction and emotional attachment (psychology), attachment to a person, animal, or thing. It is expressed in many forms, encompassing a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most su ...

'') *ā = theme vowel for

indicative mood A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Mo ...

*ba = marker for the

imperfect The imperfect ( abbreviated ) is a verb form that combines past tense (reference to a past time) and imperfective aspect (reference to a continuing or repeated event or state). It can have meanings similar to the English "was doing (something)" o ...

*nt = marker for third person plural

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

*ur = marker for

passive Passive may refer to: * Passive voice, a grammatical voice common in many languages, see also Pseudopassive * Passive language, a language from which an interpreter works * Passivity (behavior), the condition of submitting to the influence of ...

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound produ ...

So ''amābantur'' is the passive, 3rd person, plural, imperfect, indicative form of the verb "to love", which would be translated "they were being loved".

About William Whitaker

William A. Whitaker (1936–2010) was a colonel in the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

.Death Notice
/ref> While at the

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

(DARPA), he chaired the High Order Language Working Group that recommended development of the computer language Ada, in which WORDS is written. An accomplished Latinist, he created the translation software called WORDS after his retirement from the forces.

Notes

External links

Preservation effort
(archived)
Words onlineSource codeInterpres
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120423045230/http://sites.google.com/site/erikandremendoza/ , date=2012-04-23 Words for

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Legible Latin
Multi-Platform Words Program;

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

.
A Digital Latin Dictionary
Whitaker's Words for Kindle.
Android Port of Words
Pedagogy Online dictionaries Latin dictionaries 1993 software Free software programmed in Ada

Coverage

Parsing process

About William Whitaker

See also

Notes

External links