Quick... define "Dictionary!"

Can you define the word “dictionary” in just a few words, without using a dictionary?

It’s not as easy or as simple as it seems. There are several types of dictionaries—and even a little debate about what “counts” as a dictionary. For most of us, it’s hard to imagine a world in which a hefty dictionary isn’t within easy reach, on the shelf or in the phones in our pockets.

And yet…

With over seven thousand languages in the world, most do not have a single dictionary of any kind.

Dictionaries matter.

Dictionaries preserve and protect one of a cultures’ most valuable resources and gifts: its language. The lexicon of a language is more than a repository of disconnected words—it reflects the wisdom and knowledge of a people, grown and shaped over millennia.

Dictionaries are also important tools for practical communication. Language is an art form aimed at connection. And although language always changes, in time with the changing of the world and the people who use it, without common understanding there can be no communication at all. Common understanding is the structure upon which a culture’s linguistic Art can be built. 

That’s why SIL LEAD was thrilled to partner with the Nirmaan Society to create ten new dictionaries.

discussion of orthography changes with writers in Dhundari

Nirmaan Society, headquartered in Bengaluru, India, seeks to assist marginalised language communities to realise their fullest potential. From 2019–2022, Nirmaan Society sponsored the creation of dictionaries for 10 languages in Rajasthan, a state in western India. Despite the near-crippling challenges created for the project by the Covid pandemic, they published bilingual and trilingual dictionaries for ten languages as smartphone apps, with printed dictionaries for two languages. Nirmaan Society also developed  vernacular-language websites to accompany each of them.

Perhaps nothing more clearly shows the communal and cultural centrality of language (and dictionaries) than the way Nirmaan Society responded to the Covid pandemic, combining their lexicographical work with relief work in hard-hit communities. Covid made their work harder (and more expensive), but they persisted, often with the work of dedicated volunteers.

Although funding has been and continues to be a challenge, Nirmaan Society has pressed on, and ten languages now have access to a resource they never had before: dictionaries that will preserve their language and culture, and provide structure for any number of beautiful new creations.