About "Italian A-B words".


This is a plain-text file containing 31,600 Italian words.  All the
words start with A or B.

The file could be used to make a supplementary spelling-dictionary for
Excalibur, even though the collection covers only the beginning of the
alphabet.

The collection doesn't contain any accents.  Many words that ought to
bear accents have been removed altogether from the list, but the
collection still contains unaccented versions of some words that ought
to have an accent.

A large proportion of the words are verb-parts.  The collection of
verb-parts was never complete and it is now more variable than before.
This is because some words have been taken out of this collection for
use in the "Italian Supplement" spelling-dictionary.  Most of the
regular future verb-parts that ought to end in accented letters were
removed, and so were verb-parts containing "isc" and infinitives
ending in -ire and -irsi.

The original source of this collection is not known, but it looks as
though someone started to produce a comprehensive collection of
Italian words but was unable to complete it.  The collection
originally contained 52,000 words.  It reached Excalibur early in
1997, and was merged with another large list of Italian words drawn
from all parts of the alphabet.  The two lists contained many
duplicate entries which the merger eliminated, so the subsequent
separation of the two lists left fewer words in this collection than
it originally contained.  The collection was further reduced by the
deletion from this collection of words that are included in Paolo
Matteucci's "Italian Dictionary" for Excalibur.

Anyone who wants to reassemble something similar to the original
collection will probably feel it desirable to add to this list the
words starting with A and B in Paolo Matteucci's "Italian Dictionary"
and in the "Italian Supplement".  This would restore the words that
have been removed, and would add some others as well.

Adrienne Forbes
email:  dandaforbes@netmatters.co.uk
September 1998