Technical Implementation of the Vocabulário Ortográfico Comum da Língua Portuguesa

Abstract

The recent Portuguese language orthographic agreement (AOLP90) specifies that the new spelling rules are implemented in an official spelling dictionary (VOC). VOC, released in 2017, is the first common spelling dictionary valid in all Portuguese-speaking countries. AOLP90 allows for some national-level spelling variation, defined in a national spelling dictionary (VON) for each country, containing the nationally-representative words and national-level variants. This combination of a single official spelling with national variation cannot be handled in a traditional set-up for lexical data. This article describes how the lexicon is practically implemented in the VOC database. We start by presenting the nature of AOLP90, the requirements for VOC, and the lexical database. We then analyze the technical implications of orthographic variation in a pluricentric context and present the solutions and practical implementation adopted in VOC. We finish by presenting the pluricentric management system designed for this purpose, devised to cater for decentralized, but compatible management of the lexical database.