Learning resource
SEAlang Library Khmer Dictionary
The SEAlang Library Khmer Dictionary is an online Khmer-English dictionary issued by the SEAlang Library in 2007.[1] It draws mainly on two editions of the Cambodian-English Dictionary and also searches the Chuon Nath Khmer Dictionary.[2]
About the resource
The SEAlang Library was established in 2005 to provide language reference materials for Southeast Asia, with primary funding from the TICFIA program of the U.S. Department of Education. Through 2009 it focused on languages of mainland Southeast Asia that are not written in the Roman alphabet.[3] The library lists its Khmer resource among its historical dictionaries, with a dictionary, a text corpus (a large body of Khmer texts) and a bitext corpus (texts aligned with their translations).[4][3]
Contents
The 1977 Cambodian-English Dictionary, by Robert K. Headley, Kylin Chhor, Lam Kheng Lim, Lim Hak Kheang and Chen Chun, was published by Catholic University Press. It has about 20,000 headwords and nearly 25,000 subentries and draws heavily on traditional Cambodian dictionary making, especially the Chuon Nath dictionary. It gives phonemic and grammatical analyses, nearly 10,000 Pali and Sanskrit citations and hundreds of citations from Thai, Cham, French, Vietnamese and other languages.[2]
The 1997 edition, by Robert K. Headley, Rath Chim and Ok Soeum, was published by Dunwoody Press (ISBN 0-931745-78-0). Its more than 50,000 entries stress the modern language, written and spoken, but also include literary and poetic forms that help with reading classic Cambodian texts. It has less etymology than the 1977 edition, more tagging of usage levels and more than 2,000 example sentences.[2]
Searches in Khmer script also return entries from the Chuon Nath Khmer Dictionary, published by the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh in 1966. Sor Sokny of the Buddhist Institute led the CRCL-funded project that digitized it.[2] The Buddhist Institute first published Chuon Nath's Dictionary of the Cambodian Language in 1938, and the 1966 printing was its fifth edition. The dictionary was nearly lost during the Khmer Rouge years, and when the digitizing project began, the institute's library did not own a copy.[5]
Searches in IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet, can find words by sound. Approximate searches group consonants and vowels that sound alike, and in them "V" stands for any vowel or diphthong and "C" for any consonant. The site has sections for teachers and for students on using the dictionary, corpus and bitext corpus tools.[2]
Credits
The dictionary was made with the consent of Robert K. Headley, and Frank Smith and Seang Sokha gave ongoing help. Copyright in the source works is held by Catholic University Press (1977), Dunwoody Press (1997) and the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh (1966).[2]
Access
- SEAlang Library Khmer Dictionary
- Chuon Nath 1966 Khmer Dictionary, full text and search
- The site uses a Khmer Unicode font, available through the KhmerOS Project. IPA input and display work best with the Charis SIL or Doulos SIL fonts, and IPA searches for the aspirated letters cʰ, kʰ, pʰ and tʰ use a raised "h".[2]