The Historical Dictionary of Latvian (16th-17th c.) [LLVV Latviešu valodas vēsturiskā vārdnīca (16.-17. gs.)] is an interactive electronic dictionary mutually linked to The corpus of early written Latvian texts [Latviešu valodas seno tekstu korpuss].
Currently the dictionary includes ca. 2106 entries, which were chosen to demonstrate the envisaged possibilities. They represent shorter as well as longer entries for all parts-of-speech and with all types of meaning explanations. The advantage of an electronic dictionary is the possibility to constantly add new entries, edit existing entries and enrich them with information when new sources have been added to the corpus.
As is common in historical dictionaries, word meanings are listed in the order of their attestation, starting with the oldest meaning found in the sources. For each sense of a word, the oldest and the newest attested example in the period under investigation (16th-17th centuries) is given.
A special feature of the LLVV is the inclusion of proper names, which currently make up about 40% of all entries.
Entries include grammatical description, explanations of meanings, various types of phrases, as well as etymology. The corpus helps to determine more precisely the time when the word entered the written language.
Data from the dictionaries of the 17th century have a special place in the entry. Currently two major works are included in the corpus, Georg Mancelius’ ‘Lettus’ (1638) and both parts of Christoph Fürecker’s unpublished Latvian-German dictionary. Examples from these sources are given right after the headword.
In some cases, especially for plant names, or when the entry is about some concept of cultural history, a reference to the source of information about the headword is given in a special window.
Hopefully, in the future the dictionary will contain all words included in the 16th and 17th century texts of the corpus. The current version with its 1865 entries is already intended to be of use to everybody interested in the Latvian language and its history or in Latvian history and culture.