What happens when techies turn wordsmiths? The Kannada Wiktionary goes from a paltry 250 words to 2.5 lakh in just five years.
By sparing a few hours on weekends, a band of techies has catapulted the Kannada online dictionary to second largest among Indian languages, with a whopping 2,50,088 words. This also makes it one of the only three in Indian languages with more than one lakh words (Tamil and Malayalam being the other two) and the 21st largest among all languages in the world, in its online avatar.
Techies Vivek Shankar, Prashant Soratur, Sandeep Kambi and Ratheesha Ratnakara form the core of this group. Ratheesha is in the US and contributes from there. Priyank Kattalagiri, a techie and contributor, said most of them got connected through the group ‘Banavasi Balaga’. From there, they started contributing to the Kannada promotion portal ‘Honalu’.
He says the concept of Wiktionary started in 2009. “Some people had started the Kannada Wiktionary and put up some 250 words. We have taken it forward from there.”
Vivek Shankar said they all had weekends to spare and put them to good use. “On an average, each of us put in five to six hours per week on this project. It is a team effort. There are contributors like Raman Subba Rao, who are not part of our group, but who have made an immense contribution too.”
Shankar says they got the idea in 2009 when they realised that searching for the meaning of a word was not easy. “As techies, we try to solve problems through technology. People have moved away from buying fat books. We want everything on our phones and within grasp. Wiktionary tries to be a one-stop point for all Kannada words.”
Kambi said a target was always on the horizon. He recollects when he joined the team, the 50,000 target had already been achieved. “The next target was one lakh words. We would also set smaller targets for the day or week. Earlier, it would take us one or two hours to put up 10 words. Gradually, our efficiency improved; we have surprised even ourselves by pulling off this achievement despite being a small group.”
But it’s not merely a numbers game as another key contributor, Prashant Soratur, explains. “The expanse of Wiktionary is bigger than dictionaries. You can not only add voice (to indicate pronounciation), but photos and videos as well. For example, to explain a dish called muTagi that is common in Kalburgi, but not in other places across Karnataka, I added a video.”
Wiktionary, unlike Wikipedia, does not allow creation of new words on the site itself. The words have to be from an existing dictionary or a word from common usage. So the team referenced existing dictionaries. “From Kittel (Ferdinand Kittel who compiled the first modern Kannada dictionary) to the latest ones, we have several, including a dictionary on scientific words. It is a never-ending process just like the development and evolution of language,” says Shankar.
UB Pavanaja, one of the biggest contributors in Kannada to Wikipedia and Creative Commons, is all praise for the youngsters. “They have done a great job. Their contribution to Kannada Wiktionary is immense,” he says. Soratur, however, says team work made it possible.
“Wiki projects are community projects. If we work in isolation we may repeat things and be goal-less. We could motivate each other because we worked in a group,” he says.
However, along with the bouquets, the group is receiving its fair share of brickbats too, with the foremost criticism being their staunch ‘achcha Kannada’ attitude that is seen as ‘anti-Sanskrit’. They have been panned for creating new words for existing words which they perceive to be too Sanskritised.
For example, the word for Internet in Kannada, ‘antarjala’, has been substituted with ‘mindana’ which was coined only a few years ago. The group popularised it in their web posts along with words like ‘minche’ for e-mail.
“Love for Kannada should not become hatred for Sanskrit or any other language,” says another techie familiar with the group. But Kattalagiri says there is nothing wrong in the ‘experiment’. “It is a cultural experiment. Sourcing new words from older Kannada words does not mean hatred for Sanskrit.
“Moreover, the group is not coining words for Wiktionary, but for common usage that may end up in the online dictionary if it fulfills the criteria.”
source: http://www.bangaloremirror.com / Bangalore Mirror / Home> Bangalore> Others / by Shyam Prasad S, Bangalore Mirror Bureau / November 07th, 2014