On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Pedram Safari wrote: > I do not know about pronunciation, but the dictionary at > http://www.math.columbia.edu/~safari/dictionary/ > (which was discussed above) is transliteration-based (using the so-called > "mikhi" alphabet, available on the right side of the page), if that is > what you want. It is platform-independent, as well as use-to-use > (clickable).
Pedram, Thanks but it's not what I need. First of all, I've actually been a *user* of this dictionary especially a few years ago when it was one of the ONLY online Persian dictionaries and I don't remember it ever being down or not working! I even had to write a report for some governmental agency on the state of online Persian materials in which I explained that on one hand this sort of dictionary is really only for Persian speakers wanting to learn English. Think of it: no vowels (harakat), no tashdid's. Is it not absurd that a dictionary should have half the letters missing?! On the other hand, due to the lack of textbooks with proper lists of vocabulary, the poor beginning students of Persian are forced to waste their time flipping through paper dictionaries which leads to fatigue and they don't have any energy left to actually *learn* the words. Therefore, I concluded this dictionary is much better than nothing at all. My professor even asked me to find out exactly which dictionary it was and that's how I came to know it was the Aryanpour "Concise English-Persian dictionary" and had that answer at the ready when Behdad asked the other day! Now,I wonder if some of you who are so experienced technically could do another dictionary project? At least as far as getting the data up in a legal way and then others could make the interface according to the needs of the target audience and connect with English and other languages. For example, I think this very nice dictionary is a complete waste as it is available only in printed form in unmanageable 8 volumes: AUTHOR Anvari, Hasan TITLE Farhang-e bozorg-e Sokhan / beh sarparasti-e Hasan Anvari PUBL INFO Tehran : Sokhan, 1381 [2002] ISBN 9646961983 (set) It is in very clear typesetting, has latin transliteration, many idioms (estellah), examples of how to use in sentences, new words, dialect variations, etc. I'm sure this dictionary must have been funded by the Iranian government and no profits expected. I'm shocked to see that less than a dozen US universities have purchased it. I should think the author and publisher would be very happy to see it put online and all the efforts go to some use. Surely they will agree if their name is kept with the data! As for the technical part, I no longer have any doubts as to the abilities of the members of this group, especially after hearing the keyboard hack job for the sake of the ZWNJ earlier today! Thoughts? -Connie _______________________________________________ PersianComputing mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sharif.edu/mailman/listinfo/persiancomputing
