A n u k r i t i . N e t - Post Graduate Diploma in Translation Studies

EDITORS NOTE

The tribal people in India have for long lived in isolation except to be exposed for exploitation. They have not participated to their benefit in the Socio-economic development of the country. To come out of their isolation, it is necessary for them to learn the language of the majority people around them and a number of them have done so. But this bridges the communication gap only in one way and the whole burden of building up this bridge is carried by the minority group. It is necessary, however, for developing mutual understanding and good-will, to increase bidirectional communication between the tribal people and the majority people, of the region. For this purpose, the majority people, especially those who come in contact with the tribal people for various reasons such as civil administration, security, social service, trade, etc., should learn their language. The dictionary, which forms part of the package consisting of phonetic reader, grammar and instructional materials, is prepared to belpthem in their learning of the tribal language.

The preparation of a dictionary in a tribal language is an important step for the codification of the language. Keeping this in view the entry in the tribal language is given in the script suggested for it. It is followed by phonemic transcription to aid pronunciation when the script is not based on Roman. The meanings are given in the language of the state where the tribal language is spoken and in English and wherever possible, also in Hindi. This will help the literate tribal people in their learning these languages. The dictionary is followed by appendices of special lexical classes in the language in some cases

Though the dictionary is meant to be helpful for language learning, it is hoped that it will also be useful to linguists. The grammatical labels are based on the grammar of the language prepared in the Institute.

Data for the dictionary were collected in the field primarily from one informant by elicitation through the word list prepared in the Institute. They were then cross- checked with some other informants. The list of words may not be exhaustive and We are trying to evolve methods to increase the words. Comments and suggestions passed on to us will be useful to improve our future publications in this series.

(E.ANNAMALAI)

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