By Heather Cecilia Phanwar
If you have to find out the English meaning of a Khasi word, or vice versa, and you cannot find a dictionary, what will you do? Just a simple step — download the new bilingual Khasi Dictionary app.
In this age of solution-a-click-away, two youths from Shillong, Apki Lyngdoh and Kyrshanlang R Dkhar, have come up with a dictionary application that caters to people from all walks of life. Both Lyngdoh and Dkhar have master degree in Computer Applications (MCA) and have been working as program developers for almost a decade now. They launched the mobile app last January.
“We do not know the meaning of many Khasi words though that is our mother tongue. Also, nowadays we mostly converse among ourselves in English. So we felt the need for an app that could give information about the language which was once available only in books,” says 26-year-old Lyngdoh, an alumnus of St Anthony’s College.
“It all began with self-exploration in college. We (the duo) would create apps to help solve problems. In order to be an application developer, one must possess the skills for and knowledge about programming. They must be able to think logically and try to think of different solutions to solve problems,” he adds.
The duo created the app as part of their fifth semester project for MCA. They wanted to make dictionary easily available to students and professionals alike. “For a first-time developer, dictionary app is easy. So we started with this and later built complex apps,” says Dkhar.
It took them three months to complete Khasi Dictionary but the data entry part delayed the progress. The app — based on the Khasi-English and English-Khasi dictionaries by Nissor Singh — with more than 6,000 words is the first of its kind in the language. It already has 10,000 installs and over 4,800 active users.
Developing the app was a challenging task because of the complicated data entry process. “Though there was a text format for dictionaries but copy-paste was not an option as there were many errors in spellings, especially words with Khasi letters ñ and ï. So all the words and meanings were entered and typed by our friends. We had less people (in the team) and there were many words to be entered. Everyone did the work during free time as most of them have jobs,” says Lyngdoh.
The app was last updated in July 2019 when new Khasi words were added to the list. Many changes were incorporated to make the app more user-friendly. More words were added and an index was introduced on the right side of the list of words for easy navigation during a search.
On the relevance of the app, Lyngdoh says, “Most of us have forgotten our roots and if we don’t start and try to preserve it then one day it will be gone. The app is just another way of helping people to make use of technology and remember their roots.”
But the young programmers say they will not incorporate any new words or make changes this year as they are planning to shift to a better data entry process.
“We are planning to create a new app and hopefully we will launch it by the end of May. The existing app will still be available as long as we abide by the Google Play policy,” says 26-year-old Dkhar, who was also a student of St Anthony’s College and has 10 years of experience in program developing and training.
The new app that the duo are planning will allow users to post Khasi or English words and their meanings. There will be moderators to check users’ replies and “accurate answers will appear on the top of the list”, Dkhar informs.
On users’ response, Lyngdoh says, “There is a good balance of positive and negative responses. Since it is a static app people would like to see more words added. This is what most users want.”
The techies have also developed Khublei (a simple greetings app), Hebrew Interlinear Old Testament and Greek Interlinear New Testament apps.
Lyngdoh, whose hobbies include cooking and biking, and Dkhar, who is also a painter and guitarist, say they are working on improvising the existing dictionary app. “We have learned a lot during the making of the app. We get feedback from users and we hope to incorporate them in our next app,” they add.
The young program developers refuse to take all the credit for the app and express their gratitude to all who helped in the endeavour. “We are thankful to Almora R Kharkamni, Dalam Cajee, Evanstar Majaw, Joseph Tonsing, Lucy M Kurbhah, Mebalapynhun Shylla, Melvin A Dkhar, Prakash Projuli, Pynkynmaw Syiemlieh, Razak Ansari, Sheakha BT Nongbri, Sudam Sapkita and Wanbok Thabar. We invested our time and effort and there was no extra cost. All our friends decided to help us out,” they assert.
Photo courtesy: A Lyngdoh
& KR Dkhar