Jackson Bell, Brigham Young University
Humanities
Since a military coup in 2009, Madagascar’s low standard of living, political instability, and weak economy have worsened. One way to improve the situation in Madagascar is to improve English skills, which are import in the tourism, exports, financial aid, and international academic collaboration sectors. For example, a knowledge of the English language will give Malagasy people access to 45 percent of the world’s scholarly research journals. I recently published a Malagasy-English bilingual dictionary which aimed to meet this need. However, the dictionary is somewhat impractical because it is limited to simple, rigid definitions. It is insufficient for a complete understanding of either Malagasy or English because real-life usage of words often deviates from basic definitions.
Dr. Ball and I will improve the dictionary by conducting research with native speakers on correct word usage and by converting the format of five years worth of previously collected data.
Attempts at converting the format of 200 pages of this data by hand have proven tedious and time consuming. However, Dr. Ball has expertise with a programming language called VBA that can automate this process. After adding new data and converting old data, the finished product will include 15 dialects, French words as they are used in Malagasy, and usage examples for 70 percent of the words. The dictionary will be of great benefit to the academic community and to Madagascar’s tourism, receipt of financial aid, and exports industries. My presentation will also include an analysis of the modification of French words as used by Malagasy people and the percentages of words used by category; e.g. medicine, business, technology, fashion, religion, and sports. This data will give insight into the sociological forces that govern the borrowing of words from another language.