Did you mean “matrilineal”?
I was recently proofreading a paper for a Taiwanese colleague and since I don’t trust my own spelling I ran it through the spell checker. Word underlined every instance of “patrilineal” in red and helpfully suggested “matrilineal” ... Hey, at least its a kinship term. I’ve seen worse.
Still, it reminded me of a project I’ve been meaning to start for a while: I’d like to compile a list of common words used in the social sciences which aren’t in the default MS Word dictionary. Everyone could then download this list and add it as a custom dictionary. Many of you probably have your own existing custom dictionaries (I lost mine somewhere along the line), and you might be able to help us get started by uploading that to the new wiki page I’ve set up for this project: the Anthropology Word List.
Don’t feel a need to limit yourself to kinship terms, all the latest isms and post-structuralist jargon should be added to the list. If we are going to have to use words like “hybridities” at least we should spell them correctly!
I don’t know if anthropologists do much with political economic theory, but “commodify” and “commodification” are rejected by MS Word, and it suggests the grating “commoditize” and “commoditization” (which are common in American business English). [sorry for posting this here; I’ve never used a wiki before.]
For some strange reason the word globalized is not in their dictionary (despite it being such a common word). You would think after all of the discussions of the “globalized world” in the media that it would be there.
Most words beginning with neo such as neoliberalism or neotraditionalism are also not in the dictionary as well.
Ignore the grammar mistakes in the last sentence.
Using a wiki is easy – just hit the “edit” tab at the top of the screen and type away. When done, save your changes.
The one problem I see with this is that most of our customd dictionaries probably also contain vast lists of words in our areal languages that might (especially cumulatively) impede the ability of the dictionary to catch typos—do you want such word lists, or would you prefer them edited to exclude non english words?
or should I say, kastom dictionaries …
The idea is to have a list of academic jargon that everyone can use, so it should be in English.
I\’d be willing to host lists in other languages on my wiki if there is an interest in doing so – but the idea is academic terms, not terms specific to your fieldwork.
It’s not just “patrilineal” that is frustrating with MS Word, but grammar. Having grown up in the British system, I still apply older rules of grammar when writing. But of late, I have noticed jounral publications coming out with obvious Americanisms. Is this in part a product of MS Word? What MS Word “tells” me is not only my age, hanging onto out-of-date syntax, but that I am “out” of the language loop. Very frustrating.
yes, thank you for this very useful project. i´ve lost my .dic´s so often, because of known windows setup and re – setup.