This, Thing, Fervor, Fulfilment: The Treatment of Pronunciation and Spelling in Dictionaries of the Slovenian Immigration

Abstract

In the second half of the 19th century, dictionaries increased in importance among Americans. They began to be perceived as authorities by the U.S. population; users expected them to provide answers to their questions about language. At the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, on both sides of the Atlantic, the first independent Slovenian publications appeared, intended for Slovenian immigrants to the U.S. The goal of the present article is to examine the treatment of pronunciation and spelling, both in the front matter and in the body of dictionaries of the Slovenian immigration. We examine four dictionaries created by three authors (Kubelka 1904, Kubelka 1912b, Košutnik 1912, Kern 1919). They were published at a time when there were no readily available resources on English pronunciation or spelling written in Slovenian. This article documents the dictionary authors' explanations of pronunciation and how these explanations were presented to the intended audience. It also documents the treatment of spelling of words with predominantly American and predominantly British variants, at a time when both variants were widely circulating within American society. Keywords: Slovenian immigration to U.S., bilingual dictionaries, English–Slovenian dictionaries, Slovenian–English dictionaries, pronunciation, IPA, respelling, spelling, British English, American English