Community Lexicographer Guidelines: Contribute a Word (د نویو لغاتو د ورزیاتولو لارښود)
Modeled after the crowdsourced lexicographical guidelines of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED Appeals), Wiktionary Editorial Standards, and the peer-review protocols of academic linguistic corpora. All accepted submissions are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY-4.0) license at pushtodictionary.com.
- 5 stages
- Editorial review before publication
- Free
- No fees, accounts or paywalls — ever
- CC BY 4.0
- Accepted entries published open-access
- Credited
- Contributors acknowledged in revision history
1. Editorial Philosophy: Open, Rigorous, Inclusive (زموږ تګلاره)
The Open Pashto Lexicon welcomes contributions from native speakers, academic linguists, dialectologists, and literary researchers worldwide. Our mission is to document the full breadth of the Pashto language—from classical 16th-century poetic vocabulary to contemporary rural dialectal terms and modern technical neologisms.
However, to maintain enterprise-grade academic trust on par with Oxford and Merriam-Webster, unverified or colloquial single-instance usage cannot be entered directly into the core dictionary. Every submission undergoes peer review and attestation testing before publication.
Submission Flow Pipeline
4 StagesContributor Drafting
Form / TEI-XML with vocalized orthography, POS tag, and citations.
Syntax & Orthography
Automated verification against 44 canonical letters & Five Yeys.
Peer Review by Linguist
Double-blind attestation check across published classical corpora.
Canonical Publication
Live indexation under CC-BY-4.0 in dictionary API & open datasets.
2. Criteria for Lexical Inclusion (د کلمې د منلو معیارونه)
Before submitting a headword, verify that it fulfills the Three Pillars of Lexical Validity:
1. The Rule of Independent Attestation (د درېیو خپلواکو سرچینو اصل)
The candidate word must be attested in at least two published written sources OR one published source plus verified native oral corpus recording:
- Acceptable Written Sources: Published books, poetry collections (dīwān), peer-reviewed journals, newspapers, official government publications, classical dictionaries (Aslanov 1966, Kabul Pashto Tolana, Pashto Academy Peshawar).
- Acceptable Oral Sources: Recorded folktales (naql), authentic tribal proverbs (rohi mataloona), or verified field recordings with identifiable geographic provenance.
2. Discursive Currency & Longevity
Words with sustained usage across a speech community, dialect region, or specialized technical register.
- Ephemeral internet slang with < 2 years of documented currency.
- Personal idiolects or household neologisms invented by an individual.
- Commercial brand names unless genericized (e.g. ټرینګل).
- Gratuitous defamatory epithets lacking lexicographical context.
3. Dialectal Inclusivity
We actively solicit dialectal variants! If a word is used exclusively in Kandahar, Waziristan, Bannu, Wardak, or Swat, it is enthusiastically accepted, provided it is explicitly tagged with its geographic region (e.g., [Dialect: Karlani / Bannuchi]).
3. The 7-Component Submission Blueprint (د بشپړې کلمې جوړښت)
To facilitate swift review, contributions should provide as many of the seven structural components as possible:
Canonical Entry Lockup Example
7 Fields1. Canonical Orthography (رسم الخط)
Headwords must follow standardized Afghan Academy / Pashto Academy orthography. Maintain rigorous distinction among the Five Yeys:
Include diacritics (harakat) on ambiguous letters, especially zwarakay (ـٙـ / U+0659).
2. Phonetic & Dialect Transcription
Provide the pronunciation in your native region. If you know how the word sounds in both Kandahari and Peshawari standards, specify both:
3. Grammatical Classification
Identify Part of Speech (Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb, Postposition, Particle), Gender (Masculine / Feminine), and for verbs provide both the Infinitive (e.g. لیکل) and the Present Stem (e.g. لیکـ).
4. Trilingual Senses
Provide concise, non-circular Pashto definitions, accurate English equivalents with domain signposts in brackets (e.g. [BOTANY], [LEGAL]), and authentic Urdu Nastaliq equivalents.
5. Real Context Citation (مثال او ثبوت)
Every high-grade entry includes an authentic example sentence with English/Urdu translations and verifiable bibliographic source citation (author, book, publication year, page number).
4. How to Submit a Word (د ورلېږلو لارې چارې)
We provide three channels suited to different contributor profiles:
Quick Web Form
Use the interactive submission form below on this page. Best for individual headwords, missing dialect variants, or spotted orthographical corrections.
Batch Spreadsheet / CSV
For universities or cultural societies contributing 10 to 1,000 words. Format with standard columns: headword, pos, ipa_sw, ipa_ne, def_ps, def_en, def_ur, citation and email directly to [email protected] (or [email protected]).
Git Pull Request (TEI-XML / JSON)
For computational linguists and developers. Fork our GitHub repository (Aziz0346/Pushto-dictionary) and submit schema-validated pull requests against our lexical datasets.
5. Peer Review Pipeline & Reviewer Badges (د کتنې او تصدیق پړاوونه)
Submitted contributions pass through three verification stages before permanent archiving:
Status Badges in Entry View
- 1. Orthographic Sanitization (Within 24 Hours): Automated checks strip zero-width artifacts, validate correct Unicode codepoints for Pashto characters, and verify that the headword is not a duplicate.
- 2. Editorial Verification (Within 7–14 Days): A designated member of the Editorial Board verifies the citations, checks semantic accuracy against regional corpora, and refines the IPA transcription.
- 3. Imprimatur & Attribution: Once approved, the contributor's name or academic handle is credited in the entry's metadata under the Contributors & Attestation tab (unless anonymous submission is requested).
6. Licensing & Contributor Agreement (حقوق او منښتليک)
By submitting content to the Open Pashto Lexicon, you agree to the following three foundational terms:
1. CC-BY-4.0 Dedication
All submitted definitions, grammatical classifications, and transliterations will be released perpetually under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
2. No Proprietary Encumbrance
You confirm that your contribution is your original lexicographical composition or sourced from public-domain historical literature, and does not violate the copyright of contemporary proprietary publications.
3. Open Access Guarantee
Your contribution will remain free and open to students, researchers, AI developers, and the global Pashtun diaspora indefinitely without commercial paywalls.
7. Interactive Lexical Submission Form
Fill out as many fields as you can. Entries are reviewed by the lexicography board and dispatched to [email protected]:
8. Scholarly & Archival References
The collaborative submission standards, peer-review gates, and open licensing framework of the Open Pashto Lexicon adhere to recognized academic protocols:
- [1] Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (2023). Authorship and Contributorship: Collaborative Lexicography Guidelines. (Establishing contributor attribution, ethical crowdsourcing, and peer review standards).
- [2] ISO 24613-4:2021. Language resource management — Lexical markup framework (LMF) — Part 4: TEI serialization. (International standards for encoding multi-dialectal Iranian and South Asian lexical resources).
- [3] Creative Commons Corporation. (2013). Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC BY 4.0). (Ensuring perpetual, open-access worldwide re-use of user-submitted lexicographic data).
- [4] Oxford English Dictionary. (2022). OED Appeals & Public Contributions: Protocols for Public Lexicographical Submissions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- [5] Landau, Sidney I. (2001). Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Criteria for authentic corpus quotation, definition clarity, and grammatical labeling).