Click here to access search interface for dictionary.

Senior Editors: Stephanie Wood and Itziri Moreno Villamar
Principal Data Entry: Itziri Moreno Villamar
Website Design: Ginny White, Jamil Jonna, Aaron Lopez
Launch date: Spring 2010

Objectives: As envisioned by the Wired Humanities Projects of the University of Oregon, in collaboration with the ethnohistorians and art historians who work with manuscripts in the P’urhépecha (or Tarascan) languages, this dictionary will be a continuously expanding, online, searchable, and (eventually) trilingual dictionary (P’urhépecha-Spanish-English) that includes early (colonial) and modern (endangered) languages.

The dictionary’s databases include fields that support a wide range of orthographies and sources, so that users will most easily be able retrieve a rich array of information, including translations into various languages (all authored by native speakers) and examples of usage in excerpts from historical documents from New Spain. The dictionary incorporates vocabulary from the work of colonial priests, aims to harvest terms from the recent translations of colonial manuscripts (originally written by indigenous notaries and scribes, 1540-1800), and will elicit language from modern speakers, all under the interdisciplinary guidance of scholars with specializations in linguistics, language teaching, anthropology, and history. It is our policy not to mine more than 10% (Fair Use) of any published work of recent times without permission.

This multipurpose tool is intended to document and preserve language, help re-establish literacy for modern speakers, train them for professional work, and pave the way for the translation of manuscripts for the historical and cultural-heritage benefits they will offer the world.

The P’urhépecha dictionary is under development thanks to the generosity and dedication of WHP intern Itziri Moreno Villamar, a former Linguistics major and a graduate from the University of Oregon who still lives in Eugene.

We are earnestly seeking funds to expand this project and involve native speakers.  We also seek the collaboration of colleagues in Michoacán who work with colonial manuscript translation.  For further information, please contact: Stephanie Wood, swood (at) uoregon.edu, tel. (541) 346-5771.