The Central Institute of Indian Languages was set up on the 17™ July, 1969 with a view to assisting and coordinating the development of Indian Languages. The Institute was charged with the responsibility of serving as a nucleus to bring together all the research and literary out-put from the various linguistic streams to a common head and narrowing the gap between basic research and developmental research in the fields of languages and linguistics in India. In this connection, preparation of dictionaries of as many Indian languages as possible has been one of the major aims of this Institute. Dictionaries present us a rare window to look inside a language, and form an idea of the semantic map of the native speakers of the language concerned. I have also said elsewhere that Jean Cocteau is credited to have said, "The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order". In the beginning, the western world knew only of glossaries that were products of notes scholars made on the margin of difficult texts- originally written in Latin. In the Indian set-up, the commentaries or the Tiikaas served that purpose. In the western world, the year 1604 was important as that was when we saw Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall, marking a beginning of a tradition to explain the "hard" words, as he deciared on the cover: "A Table Alphabeticall, conteyning and teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard usuall English wordes, borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine, or French. &c... With the interpretation thereof by plaine English words, gathered for the benefit & helpe of Ladies, Gentlewomen, or any other unskilfull persons". He had already made his point, and this gave rise to more such works in an excitingly new field, the field of Lexicography. However, the more serious attempt began with the publication of A New English Dictionary by J.K. in the 18" century. But dictionaries became commercial tools only with the publication of webster’s and Worcester’s. As we all know, this last century was full of dictionary was with one group leaning towards prescription, and another with a clear preference towards description. Many even raised doubts as to whether there could be any truly descriptive dictionary.
Lexicography has similarly evolved in the Indian sub-continent, too, as documenting new ways of creating and managing words of one’s own languages. The present Khezha-English dictionary of about 10,000 plus head words, prepared by a team under the leadership of Dr. Kedutso Kapfo, is one such attempt which tries and connects two languages that have been a long-felt need of the particular speech community from Nagaland. From our end, at this institute, we expect that this tool will be used heavily by both communities (by especially those who wish to negotiate between Khezha and English) giving rise to many new works of translation and interpretation.
The current team spent a long time in producing, checking, testing and finalizing this work, and it has been a product of a lot of hard work. The Institute world feel rewarded if the users derive maximum benefit out of this work.
The suggestions, comments, criticisms from all those who may use this teaching material will be most welcome. Specific comments on the aspect of production, including typographical and other errors that may have crept in or stylistic changes could be sent to S.B. Biswas.
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