Christian Ludwig (1660–1728) and the beginnings of German/English lexicography

Abstract

Christian Ludwig’s 1706 A dictionary English, German, and French and his 1716 Teutsch–Englisches Lexicon were the first bilingual dictionaries published in response to an emerging German interest in learning English. Setting the dictionaries in the wider context of European bilingual lexicography, I argue that such dictionaries are valuable sources for linguistic and cultural history, in parallel to the more widely studied monolingual dictionaries. Taking advantage of the digitisation of Ludwig’s dictionaries, I show that in his 1706 English–German dictionary, adapted from the English/French dictionaries of Abel Boyer to fill a gap he identified as a practising teacher, Ludwig did not merely translate, but made systematic changes. In his larger German–English dictionary of 1716, Ludwig took his word-list largely from Kramer’s German–Italian dictionary (1700–1702), but used his own judgement in structuring entries and choosing — as well as expanding the range of — examples, reflecting his experience as a teacher and translator. I suggest that the different approach taken in dictionaries by teachers of non-native learners to explaining word meaning, pronunciation, and usage has yielded sources which — newly accessible thanks to digitisation - will enrich our understanding of language change and language standardisation, and of cultural change and exchange, where I argue for the value of taking a cross-linguistic, comparative perspective.