The Combine
The Combine is an easy-to-use tool for Rapid Word Collection (RWC)—a method of gathering words to serve as the backbone for a bilingual dictionary. At the heart of RWC are native speakers from a language community who, considering one semantic domain at a time, provide all words they can think of in their language related to that domain. The Combine facilitates collection of these words, along with translations, audio recordings, and notes, to more fully capture their form and meaning.
Words are the building blocks of language, vital to both communicating information and sharing culture. A dictionary, filled with words and their meanings, is a fundamental language resource, helping to document and preserve the language for future generations within the community and providing a bridge for communication with other communities. But many minority-language communities around the world have no such resource in their language, putting them at a disadvantage.
