NAUN-ZUBANI LUGHAT; editor Prof Abdul Aziz Mengal; pp 658; price Rs1,000 (hb); publishers Urdu Science Board, 299-Upper Mall, Lahore.

This dictionary of nine languages has been compiled by Prof Abdul Aziz Mengal who is former principal of the Government College of Commerce, Quetta. No more information has been offered about the author. Prof Mengal did this job just to bring different languages of the country closer to each other or he is a linguist and from that point of view such compilation was a must for the students of languages. The board has already published the Haft-Zubani Lughat prepared by late Ishfaq Ahmad, Mr Ikram Chughtai and Fazl-i-Ahmad Fazli. That was first published in 1974 when East Pakistan became a sovereign country yet the managers included Bengali as one of the seven languages represented in the book. It also included Kashmiri and both languages remained part of the dictionary in the second edition, which was published in 1988. After that Kashmiri was ignored by Prof Mengal and managers of the board. Has Kashmir got independence like Bangladesh? Five of the seven languages included in the first dictionary by the board have been included in the volume under review and they are Urdu, Balochi, Pushto, Punjabi and Sindhi. The other four languages included by Prof Mengal are English, Persian, Brahvi and Seraiki. What is the difference between Balochi and Brahvi can be seen on every page of the book. For instance, on page 142 six of the 16 words are common in both languages - Balochi and Brahvi - and almost same is the case with Punjabi and Seraiki. In this case 10 of the 16 words are common, while the other six have been included with an intention to create difference between the two languages.

These words have been taken from the same page whether included by Prof Mengal or inserted by experts Dr Naveed Shahzad (Punjabi) and Prof Shaukat Mughal (Seraiki).

Prof Aziz says he has done this job to bring closer the speakers of different languages and dialects, but here every effort has been made to prove that Punjabi and Seraiki have different vocabulary. The irrefutable proof is on page 256, where all 16 words in Punjabi and Seraiki are common with some minor changes in sounds. The question is what professors Naveed Shahzad, Aziz Mengal and Shaukat Mughal and the Urdu Science Board want to prove or intend to do? Do they want to bring the speakers of different languages and dialects closer or create a distance among them? One wonders what was the need of such a publication, particularly inclusion of English and Persian? The history of our linguistic attitudes is that first we dictated one language hegemony and tried to impose it by force. Then we ignored the development of the language, which we intend to adopt as the national language and finally we are still not ready to give due share to languages, which were deliberately ignored by the British. That is official and private attitude and is vividly reflected in other dictionaries published from government-aided organisation like the National Language Authority, which under the supervision of renowned scholar and government functionary Dr Jameel Jalibi produced Qaumi Angrezi-Urdu Lughat -- the Urdu version of the Webster Dictionary, Encyclopaedic Edition 1986. We have the tradition of British English but Dr Jalibi in the foreword of the dictionary declared that English language was no more under the influence of Britain and now American English was being used in standard, scientific, economic and financial matters as well as computer programming. That is why Jalibi preferred Webster. Different sections were given to different scholars and translators for translation. Consequently, results were different, sometimes very ridiculous and college teacher, prominent writer and translator Shahid Hameed has pointed out all such blunders in his brilliant critique of the dictionary entitled Tabsara…Urdu-Angrezi Lughat. Here he pointed out that choice of Webster was wrong, as it should have been a British dictionary to which Pakistanis were more familiar. Another point is that American pronunciation is different from the British therefore it creates confusion for the Pakistani readers. It is unfortunate that no indication of pronunciation has been given.

It is incomplete in many respects. For instance, there are more than 24 phrasal verbs under verb get but the dictionary counts only nine. Word get off has 11 meanings, but only two have been given in Dr Jalibi's dictionary. Hameed has pointed out many blunders, which have not yet been rectified.

This Qaumi Lughat forced Hameed to take up this Herculean task himself and he started work on an exhaustive English-Urdu dictionary based on Oxford Dictionary of English. He did not know how his work would see the light of the day but he started work after his retirement from the Government College, Lahore. There were no publishers around for that huge investment. So far government learned bodies are concerned, they have no space for such people. Hameed was not sure of finding a publisher for such a huge work but his friends including late Dr Sohail Ahmad coaxed him to continue the work. Dictionaries are not the work of a single hand. They need collective and concerted efforts, but Hameed was determined to complete his work, though there was no hope of getting it published. But there appeared a silver lining and a new publisher, Readings managers welcomed Hameed's great job and sent an outline of the dictionary to known scholars for suggestions and improvement. Hameed has completed his job and one hopes he will enjoy the fruit of his hard labour this year. — STM