First Dictionaries and Their Impact on Language Development

Two multilingual dictionaries including the Slovene language (published in 1592 and 1603) are among the first books published in Slovene, brought about by the Protes­tant movement in the Slovene territory in the second half of the 16th century. The two dictionaries were compiled by the German polymath Hieronymus Mesiger. Prior to the publication of these, there existed only shorter glossaries (e.g., the so-called Registers, added to Dalmatin’s translation of the Bible (1578 and 1584) and trilin­gual glossaries in Bohorič’s grammar (1584)). In the Counter-Reformation period Mesiger’s two dictionaries were soon followed by the Italian-Slovene dictionary by Alasiea da Sommaripa, a priest from Piedmont. The first dictionary representations of the Slovene language differ according to their type, size and purpose. From the 19th until the mid-20th century, the first dictionaries were only mentioned briefly in scholarly research. However, after that followed a period of increased research interest in the early dictionary descriptions of the Slovene language. The studies of a number of authors focused on a range of different topics. These revealed the diction­ary characteristics of the first dictionary representations of the Slovene language, including word-formation and semantic relations between the entry and equivalent. Specific attention was given to the variety of the vocabulary covered by the diction­ary, the dialectal component, the connections between different dictionaries and their sources. The studies also highlighted the importance of the early dictionaries for the development of Slovene lexicography and the Standard Slovene language (i.e., Slovene literary language).