Marathi-Russian-German dictionary to help foreign language learners

Braving all odds faced in the run-up to the printing,considering that scripts of three languages were involved in one single publication,the dictionary was formally released recently.

“We have paid specific attention while conveying denotative and connotative meaning of Marathi words into Russian and German in our dictionary. The vocables are studied carefully at their lexical,semantic and pragmatic levels which consequently improve the languages’ factual representation and thus enhance the expression skill of the dictionary users,” Sunanda Mahajan,professor with German language section at the Department of Foreign Language,University of Pune,told Newsline,on Thursday.

Compiled by Yogendra Kumar,retired professor from Russian language section,and Anagha Bhat,assistant professor with Russian language section,along with Mahajan,the dictionary project also had involvement of Amruta Kulkarni,head of the department of German language at Fergusson College as project associate with Julia Khadilkar,Ulrike Schatz and NN Sidelev on the editorial board.

Interestingly,the dictionary project has its genesis in a special lexicon project taken by these language experts with financial aid from the University Grants Commission (UGC).

“The UGC funded project was limited only to the preparation of the lexicon. It ended in December 2010. After submission of the UGC project,we thought of taking it forward by converting it into full fledged dictionary. It proved a herculean task indeed considering the intricacies involved. Printing too was a big challenge as scripts of as many as three languages had to be combined in a single print,” Mahajan said.