Kaitag Dictionary

Source repository for a bilingual (English/Russian) dictionary of Kaitag, a Northeast Caucasian language spoken in Dagestan.

Browse the dictionary at urssivar.com/language/dictionary.

Entry Format

Lexemes live in entries/[letter]/, one YAML file per entry named after its headword (e.g. абаба.yaml), with spaces replaced by underscores (e.g. алав_биркара.yaml). Homonyms: аккор.yaml, аккор-2.yaml. Fields in four blocks separated by blank lines:

# Block 1: Identity
headword: абаба
ipa: abaˈba
tags: [n]
forms:
  - text: абабне
    gloss: pl

# Block 2: Definitions
definitions:
  - translation:
      en: maternal grandmother
      ru: бабушка по матери
    tags: [kinship]
    examples:
      - text: Дами дила абаба риччихид.
        translation:
          en: I love my grandmother.
          ru: Я люблю мою бабушку.

# Block 3: About
etymology:
  en: Reduplication of *аба* "mother" (cf. *аттаба* "paternal grandmother").
  ru: Редупликация *аба* "мама" (ср. *аттаба* "бабушка по отцу").

# Block 4: Links
variants: [авба, бавба]
derived_from: [уба]
see_also: [аттаба]

Reference tables in meta/ include the tag taxonomy (tags.yaml) and alphabet with IPA mappings (alphabet.yaml).

See guidelines.md for all authoring rules and spelling conventions, and urssivar/script for the underlying script and character system.

Setup

Install the YAML by Red Hat VSCode extension — the schema at .vscode/entry-schema.json provides autocomplete and validation for all entries/**/*.yaml files.

Claude Code with the entry-polish skill can assist with entry review, but all review decisions remain with the author.

Python scripts in scripts/ handle validation and export, driven by d.py at the project root.

python d.py new <headword>      # create a new entry file
python d.py validate [а б]      # validate entries
python d.py export              # create files to export/

Version History

v1.1 (2026, in progress): Open-source YAML repository with editorial guidelines and tooling. Enriching entries with cross-references, usage examples, semantic tags, aliases, etymologies, and notes. In collaboration with Gasanov M. R. from Kirki village.

• Letter а: complete (~175 entries)
• Remaining letters: in progress — priority is clarifying meanings and capturing examples

Future: orthographic standard, corpus stats, lexicographic review, morphological annotation and paradigm generation, and more.

v1.0 (May 2025): Import of JSON source from Bazur dictionary, converted to YAML files. Output features: accented headwords, grammatical forms, POS tags, dialectal variants. In collaboration with prof. Gasanova U. U., based on her dissertation's Shilyagi village wordlist (2012). Additional references: Temirbulatova S. M. (2004, 2008, 2021), Gabibova K. M. (2009).

License

Content under CC BY-SA 4.0, Code under MIT.

When citing a specific release, see its release notes for the versioned citation. To cite the current state:

Magomedov, M. (2026). Kaitag Dictionary. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. https://github.com/urssivar/dictionary