Enter data. On
the Data panel, you set up parallel word lists one entry at a time.
You choose the entry by clicking its gloss in the list on the left
of the panel, or by using the Previous, Next, or Find Gloss
The Add Datum button
brings up a dialog box in which you choose the speech variety that
you want to add a datum for. Then you type it in.
entire International Phonetic Alphabet (together with a few dozen
other symbols comparative linguists use) is at your fingertips. For
special phonetic symbols, pick the a-z symbol the most like the
symbol you want and type it. (For the picture above, you would type
"v" as the third symbol in the BLw line.) Then hold down
the control key Ctrl and press space -- little finger and index
finger, no need to take your hands from the keyboard.
A box with phonetic
symbols that are sort of v-like but aren't "v" appears.
Type or click "2" to choose the second one, and it replaces
the "v" you typed. There are also key characters outside
the a-z range:
stop and similar characters: type "?" and Control-space
for clicks: type "!" and Control-space
characters: type "^" (Shift-6) and Control-space
for some, ":" (colon) and Control-space
modifier characters: type ":" (colon) and Control-space
that go under, above or through the sign proper
, (comma) with Control-space
for a list of diacritics that mainly go under the base
~ (tilde) with Control-space
for a list of diacritics that go above the base character.
- (hyphen) with Control-space
for a list of diacritics that mainly go through the base
Or, as a reminder on a single line:
? glottal; ! click; ^ or : modifier; , or ~
diacritic; then CtrlSp
Edit data. Once you have data
on the Data panel, you can double click on any of them to correct it.
When editing, use
Ctrl-x to delete
symbols you have selected,
Ctrl-c to copy
symbols you have selected, and
Ctrl-v to paste
symbols you have copied at the cursor position. This applies both
to symbols you have deleted with Ctrl-x and to symbols you have
copied with Ctrl-c.
The Edit Datum button gives you an
alternate place to make corrections. You make them in the same way
you would make them directly on the panel.
Edit Datum also lets you fill in
information about semantic shift, as when the word that is listed as
meaning "five" for that entry turns out to actually mean
"hand" in one or two of the entries. And you can add any
remarks in Edit Datum that you might want to refer to later.
Import data. Data can come to
you from other computers. Click here to
As soon as you
have some data entered, you can annotate