CBOLD Online Searchable Data Sources
Instructions for using the search utilities.


One of the aims of CBOLD is to produce online searchable dictionaries. Electronic dictionaries and word lists have been donated to us, and we have also scanned and edited many Bantu sources. Those data sources we believe are of reasonable quality can be downloaded here.
We have also been able to make some of the sources searchable from our web page. The dictionaries below can all be searched via a basic web search utility developed at CBOLD. There are instructions to use the utility on this web page.

One of the advantages of using these dictionaries is that the CBOLD search utility can search for any designated string anywhere in a word, unlike paper dictionaries which are most useful for searching for strings at the beginning of a word. Also, the search utility supports metacharacters which allow users to search for phonological classes of segments and not just particular segments.

A note of warning: we have tried to ensure that all of the data in our online dictionaries is accurate. However, maintaining the integrity of all our data is a large task and we often find errors on our part as well with the data supplied to us. We recommend that you use these utilities as a starting point for research and make sure you verify what you find here with other sources (some of which may be referenced in our Bantu Bibliography.

We would like to thank all of the researchers who made their data available to CBOLD so that we could create these online searches. Please let us know if any of the citations here are incorrect.
Periodically, we will be making more dictionaries searchable on the web. If you have any questions or comments or would like to see a particular dictionary made searchable on this page, e-mail Jeff Good at jcgood@socrates.berkeley.edu.


CBOLD Online Searchable Data Sources

Tervuren's database of Bantu Lexical Reconstructions (BLR2)(9800 entries)
Deblois's Bukusu Dictionary(900 entries)
KWL's 1998 Bukusu Word List(5900 entries)
Mtenje's 2001 Chewa Dictionary(6200 entries)
Kisseberth's 1996 Emakhua Word List(7200 entries)
Snoxall's 1967 Ganda Dictionary(6300 entries)
Van Der Veen's 1994 Gevove Word List(1450 entries)
Downing's 1999 Jita Word List(2200 entries)
Mathangwane 1995 Kalanga Word List(3000 entries)
Odden and Hubbard's 1994 Kerewe Word List(1500 entries)
Taylor's 1959 Kiga Dictionary(12,500 entries)
Gazania and Hyman's 1996 Koyo Word List(1700 entries)
Jalla's 1982 Lozi Dictionary(24,000 entries)
Mouguiama's 1994 Mpongwe Word List(2600 entries)
Kavutirwaki's 1978 Nande Word List(2100 entries)
Pelling's 1971 Ndebele Dictionary(5000 entries)
Rugemalira's 1993 Nyambo Word List(1500 entries)
Maganga and Schadeberg's 1992 Nyamwezi Word List(2000 entries)
Gusimana's 1972 Pende Dictionary(8200 entries)
Polak-Bynon 1978 Shi Dictionary(2500 entries)
The Tanzanian Language Survey 1975(125,000 entries)
Murphy's 1997 Venda Word List(8900 entries)
Ngunga's 2001 Yao Dictionary(7400 entries)


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