beta version

Dear All

Thank you for your feedback. As a matter of fact we did not know how people would respond to this endeavor.  Thankfully the response was better than what we expected and we are thankful to all of you for responding. Some of you have some queries as well which I will try to answer.

The whole work started around 1 year back. There was no Kashmiri font available and whatever was there on Kashmiri on the net was in the form of Image. The work took place in the Department of Linguistics, University of Kashmir and the  team involved Linguists, Kashmiri experts and Computer Scientists. The entire team is young and believe me they are a dynamic lot. Now coming to your queries

The name chosen was Kashmiri zaban and not ‘koshur’ as some of you have suggested because at that time we thought that the word ‘kashmiri’ was prevalent among non-kashmiris as well, hence the use of ‘kashmiri’.

We had also thought about adding Roman script as well, and will be working on that as well. But before starting that we have to first standardize the script from that angle.

Some of you were interested in the use of ORIGINAL KASHMIRI  in the dictionary. Hmmmm, well I think the best way is to have the current Kashmiri words in the dictionary as well as the older Kashmiri words.

The dictionary is built in such a way that we can add more languages to it, be it Urdu, or for that matter, French, etc. but we first need to consolidate what has already been done.

And finally, the dictionary has around 12,000 entries, so it is not surprising that you don’t find many words in it.

Now, let us see what each one of us can do for this dictionary. We brought this dictionary on the net and it belongs to all of us. So please spend some time on this dictionary, even a couple of hours every week would make a difference. Suggest new words, suggest new meanings, come up with new ideas, spend time on this work. Believe me, we are an overworked team but we will definitely respond to your queries and suggestions.  And finally, if some people among you want to be even more closely associated with this dictionary do let us know. We will see in what way you can contribute.

Best,

Aadil A. Kak and the Language Technology Team