Mangalore, June 13: A Kannada-Konkani dictionary in both Kannada and Devanagri scripts was released here on Sunday at the Vishwa Konkani Kendra.
The bi-lingual dictionary, Kannada Konkani Ratnakosha, has been compiled by Mandarke Madhav Pai, a renowned lexicographer and writer.
Vishwa Konkani Kendra president Basti Vaman Shenoy said Mr Pai had painstakingly worked for around five years to complete the dictionary. Because of problems with the printers who did not know Konkani, the dictionary had to be corrected 15 times, he said.
After releasing the dictionary, Padma Shenoy, a Kannada writer, said that Mr Pai was a writer, researcher, and translator of high calibre, who worked hard even at advanced age.
His numerous works include Konkani translations of Basavanna's vachanas which was no mean feat, she said. Understanding the great poet's works itself was a challenging task, and Mr. Pai had retained all of Basavanna's spirit and meanings in the Konkani translation.
She said that Mr. Pai had an “inner strength” which made him write. She said the body of work both scholarly and creative that Mr. Pai had accomplished was “astonishing”. “It would take me half an hour to read out the list,” she said.
Ms. Shenoy said the amount of research done was admirable. Giving an example, she said Mr. Pai regularly wrote a column in Kodial Khabar, a Konkani publication on the origin of words and how a particular word changed from one language to other.
The dictionary is priced Rs. 500.
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