The twenty-first annual lexicography and lexical computing workshop took place from 13 to 17 June, 2022 in a fabulous old city, Telč, in the Czech Republic. 

The workshop was well-organised down to the last details. The main secret of its success lies in the perfect match of the speakers, Michael Rundell, Ondřej Matuška, and Miloš Jakubíček and a well-prepared programme. We started from the general overview of corpora and dictionary landscape on the first day and then gradually dived into details during the next four days. 

Michel Rundell, a linguist, lexicographer, and editor-in-chief of Macmillan Dictionary, shared his experience in practical dictionary work. Miloš Jakubíček, at the same time, showed us how the Sketch Engine and corpora could make our life easier while doing various lexicographic activities. Ondrej Matuška, a passionate Sketch Engine trainer, has shown us the interface of the Sketch Engine, explained its every button and functions.

The icing on the cake was the real experience of working in Sketch Engine and Lexonomy . We have done and learnt how to:

  • generate concordances, word sketches and thesaurus, 

  • compile a small corpus, 

  • extract word lists, keywords and terms,

  • work with regular expressions, 

  • write our dictionary articles,

  • select dictionary lemmata,

  • disambiguate the word senses,

  • make up definitions, and extract examples and collocations from the corpus,

  • select pictures for dictionary articles, etc.

Furthermore, this year’s guest speaker was Michal Měchura – a well-known lexicographer, computational linguist, and author of the dictionary writing system Lexonomy. His presentation was devoted to markup languages, such as XML and its alternatives, and data modelling. 

Except for the excellent study time, we enjoyed hanging out together every day after the lectures. It was a great time when we sat in the local pubs, drank tasty local beer, talked and discussed interesting linguistic topics. Also, the enjoyable excursion to the Renaissance castle and local brewery was organised for us and the whole Sketch Engine team.

Being a participant from Ukraine, let me also express my deep gratitude to the Sketch Engine team for standing with my country during the Russian war against Ukraine and for giving me the possibility to take part in this amazing workshop for free. In addition, I was in seventh heaven when I was offered a job on the project of compiling a multilingual online dictionary for Ukrainians. I could only dream about it. There are many refugees from Ukraine involved in the project. I am sure that the compilation of such a dictionary will help thousands of Ukrainians, especially our refugees.

To sum up, it was an unforgettable experience, a warm workshop atmosphere and nice people! I highly recommend Lexicom to everyone interested in languages! My dream has come true here! Maybe your dream will be fulfilled during the next Lexicom as well. So come and check next time.

Oksana Pavelko