XOBDO, the community dictionary with a mission!

By Bikram M. Baruah, Abu Dhabi (UAE), Coordinator, XOBDO.ORG

How many of you, whose mother tongue is Assamese; have the basic knowledge of the languages of the neighbouring states, like Khasi, Ao, Mizo, and Meetelon? Let alone these languages, how many of you know even the basics of few languages of Assam itself? Like Bodo, Mising, Rabha, Karbi? Probably very few of you are, that can be counted on finger-tips. The reverse is also true… there is hardly any genuine effort to learn Assamese by the non-native-speakers residing in the state, let alone those in the neighbouring seven-sister states.

This man-made linguistic barrier is probably one of the main causes of the misunderstanding and the related unrest arising today among the different ethno-linguistic groups of the north-east.

Language	Word Count
Assamese	24702
English	13099
Dimasa	2870
Karbi	1878
Meeteilon	1230
Tai	920
Bodo	804
Mising	634
Hmar	632
Khasi	405
Table 1: Word Count of majoe langugaes in XOBDO.ORG as of 10-March-2010.

Can we break this barrier and create a harmonious society of mutual understanding and respect in the entire north-east?

This is what we are trying to do in XOBDO in a small way! It is an informal gathering of people living across the globe to collectively do something good for the region. The love for their mother tongue has generated more than 1300 selfless volunteers who are working day and night from different parts of the world to create this unique project – a multi-directional, multi-lingual, multi-media embedded, online dictionary of the languages of the North-East India. Apart from achieving 24000 Assamese words, it is already galloping ahead with a large corpus of Karbi, Dimasa, Mising and Meeteilon words. Efforts are on to attract volunteers to provide a constant addition of words in the other 16 languages adopted in the project.

XOBDO is an effort of the community. It is also a descriptive dictionary – that is, it does not prescribe spelling and meanings of the words, rather it describes how people use these words. Therefore, the community magazines across the globe like Posoowa, Luitor Pora Mississipi, Prabaxi Bihuwan, Jetuka etc along with the regular newspapers, magazines etc have a very important role to play in this effort. What they print, along with the writings of renowned writers and journalists will dictate what is included in XOBDO. To help in this effort, if possible, we would like to request the local language newspapers and magazines that have online presence to publish in UNICODE, so that XOBDO can analyze them and easily pick up new words from there.

Also, do not forget to register yourself in www.xobdo.org and add words, point out, errors, challenge the exitsing words and their meanings and discuss it with other members to resolve the differences and do many more such things.