RE: VMs: Encyclopedia

["Brian Tawney" <btawney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Are we talking about

> a) a modern thematic dictionary of various medieval languages in which 30+
> words for owl appear near 30+ words for swan and 30+ words for eagle

Yes, except instead of modern, medieval (or maybe classical), for one or
more European languages.  I don't know if such a thing existed in Europe,
I'm just curious to know if it did.

The Pentaglot (just as an example) lists parallel words in Chinese, Manchu,
Mongol, Tibetan and Uighur, organized thematically.  If you wanted to know
the word for "eagle", you looked up the section on birds, scanned for the
entry for "eagle" in your language, and found next to it the word for
"eagle" in the other languages.

> b) a medieval encyclopedia, arranged thematically?
...
> There are many answers to b), for instance Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum
> Maius (very long and no modern edition) and Konrad von Megenburg, Das Buch
> der Natur which is online here

> http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/etcs/germ/mhd/konrmeg/konrm.htm

Thank you.  I will look at this--though my woeful lack of Middle High German
is likely to be an issue :)

Brian


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