Survey of Swahili dictionaries: elements of the microstructure

The present article investigates several elements of the microstructural level of Swahili bilingual dictionaries. The main emphasis is on the grammatical information, its content and presentation in the various dictionaries chosen for analysis. The other components of a dictionary entry analysed include the headword, its citation form, and additionally the pronunciation, usage labels and etymological information not found in every dictionary. We investigate the many ways in which information can be presented to the user, influencing the user-friendliness of a given dictionary.