Projects

The Title VI Uzbek Dictionary Project has compiled a new bilingual dictionary of modern literary Uzbek for English speakers. Currently being edited, this new bilingual dictionary contains over 40,000 Uzbek-English entries (with over 50,000 glosses) and 50,000 English-Uzbek entries. It was compiled primarily from Uzbek-Russian and Uzbek-Uzbek dictionaries published in the former Soviet Union, and updated and expanded to include new lexical items and expressions collected from the web, newspapers, and other recent publications (such as a new 5-volume explanatory Uzbek dictionary and a new 12-volume Uzbek national encyclopedia), as well as information on grammatical usage, over 28,000 illustrative examples, and hundreds of images of cultural objects difficult to explain in English translation.

The Title VI Web-based Multimedia Uzbek Dialect Dictionary Project represents the first phase of CTILD’s Uzbek Dialect Project at Indiana University. It incorporates data from the Title VI Uzbek Dictionary Project and builds on the latter project’s work by creating an online multimedia comparative dictionary that can be used as a self-learning tool by students to listen to, compare, and study the linguistic variation of Uzbek dialects and the literary language. In addition to images of cultural items, the online dictionary will initially contain textual data and audio recordings of words, phrases, and expressions collected from the Uzbekistani Uzbek literary language and from the Tashkent dialect. (This will be supplemented by recordings from other dialects as additional funding becomes available.) The project is also developing an online interactive audio primer that can be used to train students who have studied Uzbekistani Uzbek to comprehend the different phonological and morphological features of the Tashkent dialect.

Pilot Projects

Central Asian Culture Visual Dictionary contains a large collection of images of cultural items, many of which are difficult to describe in English translation. The images of each item will eventually be accompanied by its indigenous name in Uzbek and a brief description in English.

Dictionary of Uzbek Metaphors includes more than 100 metaphors under 7 subject headings to which a new metaphors will be added in the near future.

Thematic Tajiki Dialect Dictionary contains comparative list of words and phrases collected from the contemporary Tajiki literary language and from the Khujand dialect.