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Title
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Choctaw Dictionary: Cyrus Byington's Dictionary of Choctaw Language
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Date
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2020
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1915
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Bibliographic Citation
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Martin, Jack B. 2020. Choctaw Dictionary: Cyrus Byington's Dictionary of Choctaw Language. https://www.webonary.org/byington-choctaw/ [date of access].
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annotates
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"This dictionary of Choctaw was compiled by Rev. Cyrus Byington (1793–1868), a missionary to the Choctaw in Mississippi and Indian Territory. The manuscript was first edited by John R. Swanton and Henry S. Halbert and published in 1915. This second edition is the first electronic edition and corrects the spelling used in the first edition."
Unfortunately, when Swanton and Halbert edited Byington's manuscript, they introduced several changes in spelling:
ʋ → ạ
hl → ł
a̱, o̱, i̱, u̱ → aⁿ, oⁿ, iⁿ, uⁿ
They also removed many spaces between markers and roots:
ʋm isuba → ạmisuba ‘my horse’
These changes may seem minor, but they affect alphabetical order and can lead to confusion, particularly among those learning the language.
This new, second edition of Byington's Choctaw dictionary was created with specific goals in mind:
1) to import Byington's dictionary into a database so that headwords, definitions, parts of speech, etc. can be searched electronically.
2) to correct the spelling back to the standard spelling and make minor corrections in punctuation.
3) to create a better English-Choctaw index (not yet done).
4) to restore traditional spacing of markers and roots (not yet done).
