Alistu

Alistu is a free, open-source software project and knowledge platform designed to organize and share multilingual terminology and glossaries. It provides a collaborative workspace for linguists, educators, and cultural practitioners to create, edit, and link lexical entries across languages, supporting documentation of endangered languages and cross-lingual research.

Etymology and origins: The name alistu is inspired by roots meaning “to illuminate” in several constructed and natural languages, chosen to reflect learning and sharing. The project is community-driven and not tied to any single nation, with development occurring through international volunteer collaboration.

Architecture and data model: Alistu uses a modular core with entities such as Lemma, Sense, Language, and Relation, plus provenance metadata. It offers a RESTful API, a web editor, and client libraries for common programming environments. Data can be exported in JSON-LD, RDF, or CSV, enabling integration with other linguistic resources. The platform supports multilingual input, cross-language links, and lexical notes attached to entries.

Governance and licensing: The project is maintained by volunteers and released under the MIT license. Changes are tracked in a public history, and substantive updates are discussed on project discussion channels to ensure community oversight and transparency.

Impact and usage: Since its inception, alistu has been adopted by universities, field researchers, and digital humanities projects to document terminology, annotate word senses, and connect related terms across languages. It aims to support language documentation, education, and collaborative research by providing interoperable data practices and accessible tooling.