WITH its many resources and ease of use, the Internet offers us stuff that is not easily available to us. Reference and shortcuts to any and every bit of knowledge can be had here. And that is where the utility of Internet based dictionaries comes into play.
For the proper upkeep of any language, a dictionary is always a must. With an alphabetical listing of hundreds of thousands of words, phrases and their usage, the dictionary has made itself an indispensable tool for any home, office and educational institution. However, the Internet has made life easier. It has especially taken care of carrying bulky dictionaries all over the place. You can simply type in a word and the rest just open onto your screen. And one of the best places to find this information is at http://www.yourdictionary.com/. An extensive resource, this site offers multilingual dictionaries in 150 languages. In fact, this is probably one of the best sources of language anywhere on the Internet. This site has links to various web sites that support other languages. And yes, Urdu is a main component here. There are 6,800 known languages spoken in the 200 countries of the world. Of these, 2,261 have writing systems (the others are only spoken) and about 300 are represented by online dictionaries as of May 11, 2004. The people at this web site claim to add new languages as well as dictionaries to their list. As a result they have the widest and deepest set of dictionaries, grammars and other language resources on the web.
Here there’s an interesting link called Top Words of 2004. Go through it and you’ll find out what was introduced in the English lingua last year
Linguistic exercises in 23 languages, with 506 language combinations are presented at http://www.goethe-verlag.com/tests/index1.htm. Each one contains 100 tests, with answers. The tests are printable and cannot be submitted online. With the help of drop down menus you can take part in these. However, sadly Urdu doesn’t feature here, though Arabic has its place on this site.
At http://dictionary.reference.com/ users can search a number of dictionaries. These include computer terms, English grammar, usage and style guides, reference works and even the famed Roget’s Thesaurus. In fact, the thesaurus is the best feature, something that isn’t easily found elsewhere. Other resources include the word of the day.
Other than the English language resources, there are resources for our national language as well. Urdu Dictionary http://www.ebazm.com/dictionary.htm is an Urdu-English dictionary where Urdu is written in the Roman (English) script. The dictionary is part of the eBazm web site that hosts a mailing list, a discussion forum as well as the Urdu dictionary with more than 11,000 words. For Urdu lovers, this is a great site.
The mailing list is dedicated to Urdu poetry and Hindi poetry (ghazal/kavita) while the discussion forum can be used for poetry and poetry related or other discussions.
The word search here works for Urdu-English as well as for English-Urdu. Enter the Urdu, or the English word in its respective field and you’ll get your desired results. Use of both (Urdu and English) words at same time might result in no match. No Urdu script or downloadable fonts are needed here. All that one has to do is type in the word and get on with the work.
A very useful site for those starting out to learn Urdu is http://biphost.spray.se/tracker/dict/index.html. This site has a good, but not vast vocabulary, and it too is written in the Roman script rather than the Urdu script. The creators of this site claim to be the first English-Urdu Dictionary that was launched on the Web. Online for about five years, the aim of the people here since, has been to reach those people as well as those who are not familiar with the Urdu script. Besides there still are several technical complications that have compelled the host of the site to abstain from using the Urdu script. There are Urdu numericals here as well, which is really helpful. Other notes include a Urdu Vowel Pronunciation Key.
If you can get over the horrible background and the poor colour selection then I assume that http://www.urdustan.com/ isn’t a bad site.
Dedicated to Urdu writing and poetry, this site has an informal conversational style where the language changes between English, Urdu in Roman script and Urdu in Urdu script.
The site reloads on its own, something that can be really irritating. Loads of stuff related to Urdu literature as well as news and views from the subcontinent are here. There is even an Urdu radio available here. Just tune in to the latest ghazals.
WITH its many resources and ease of use, the Internet offers us stuff that is not easily available to us. Reference and shortcuts to any and every bit of knowledge can be had here. And that is where the utility of Internet based dictionaries comes into play.
