ថ្ងៃពុធ ១៣កើត ខែស្រាពណ៍ ឆ្នាំខាល ចត្វាស័ក ព.ស.២៥៦៦ ត្រូវនឹងថ្ងៃទី១០ ខែសីហា គ.ស.២០២២
Wednesday the 13th Waxing Moon of Sāvaṇa B.E.2566 equivalent to August 10, A.D.2022 Year of the Tiger
Khmer Times
The National Council of Khmer Language (NCKL) has revised the Khmer National Dictionary and plans to publish it by the end of 2022, and the dictionary will include more than 7,000 new definitions that are not available in the current edition.

The Khmer dictionary in use today has been compiled since 1915 during the reign of King Sisowath by many Khmer and foreign literary scholars including Chuon Nath. This edition was published in 1967-1968.

Hean Sokhom, NCKL chairman, said yesterday that the publication of the dictionary would meet the needs of the people as well as assist in the search for new technical terms in line with the development of the nation.

He said that in the Khmer dictionary used today contains are more than 18,000 words and new definitions. The new version will include more than 7,000 new word definitions. The new words are commonly used, terms used daily and technically related.

He said: “The problem with creating a Khmer dictionary is we do not have corpus, along with difficulties related to the linguistic characteristics of the Khmer language, which has two different tendencies – one tends to use the Khmer-Mon spelling and the other tends to use Sanskrit. The lack of human resources with linguistic skills is also a challenge.”

However, adding new words to the dictionary is very useful, especially in line with the progress of society, as people can find new words that they do not understand.

This updated Khmer National Dictionary has been prepared in detail with explanations and new words by the NCKL. The revision of the dictionary is expected to be completed according to the five-year plan by 2022 and the first 1,000 copies will be printed after publication in PDF format and the creation of an App for mobile phones and computers.

In addition to updating the Khmer dictionary, NCKL has also officially developed and recognised more than 1,700 new technical terms. The new terminology adopted by NCKL are terms used in political science and for construction architecture.

Sokhom said that the two groups of technical terms are glossaries that will be published by the end of 2022 for the use by technicians in both fields, and the NCKL has published technical dictionaries of linguistics, literature, chemistry and biology.