Meidad Ovadia, the creator of the new digital Khoekhoegowab dictionary ‘LexiKhoe’, says with contributions from community members, the dictionary can reach great success.
He was speaking to Desert FM yesterday.
“This whole community can make a great, great project, a great dictionary. And I think that in a year from now, it can consist of thousands of words, and even more,” Ovadia said.
After joining a research group, Ovadia said he noticed there are almost no digital resources in Khoekhoegowab. He added that he saw a demand and need for such a dictionary.
He said he saw the demand for something which is more accessible to the public and more readable for the Khoekhoegowab-speaking community.
“And this is why I decided to create such a dictionary. I’m a software engineer, and when I see something I can solve myself and create a technological solution for it, I’m very excited to do so,” Ovadia said.
He noted that this is a crowdsourced dictionary, which means any user of the dictionary can enter entries into the dictionary.
Ovadia said only time will tell whether it will be successful or not, but he believe it will be successful and will inspire other language communities.
“But, see, we must understand that although there are dictionaries which are very important, language is something that is constantly developing and changing. Obviously, a printed dictionary cannot be published every day, whereas a digital dictionary can be updated any time, any minute,” he said.
Ovadia said it is a much more efficient way of documenting and preserving the language
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