हे मराठीत का होवू शकले नाही, १९व्या शतकातच?...the Oxford English Dictionary, World’s First Crowdsourced Project

२०२३ साली एक फार सुंदर पुस्तक प्रकाशित झाले : "The Dictionary People: The unsung heroes who created the Oxford English Dictionary" by Sarah Ogilvie... 

त्या वर आलेल्या अनेक परिक्षणांतून काही उतारे खाली देतोय :

"...When his Indian languages specialist Edward Brandreth died, having spent countless hours in the British Museum tracking down entries for 35 separate lists of desiderata, Murray wrote of the debt he had incurred over their long collaboration. ‘Among the many volunteers whose work has contributed to making the New English Dictionary what it is, not many have had the capacity and qualifications, the willinghood, and the time to work for it as our honoured friend has done. May his name never be forgotten when the story is told.’"

"... However, Ms. Ogilvie’s book is at its best when focusing not on words but on people. In addition to those mentioned, we encounter fraudsters and fantasists, vicars and vegetarians, rain collectors and a mummy collector, a cannibal, a kleptomaniac and a pornographer, together with Karl Marx’s daughter and Virginia Woolf’s father; most of the contributors were autodidacts, amateurs and unknowns who found themselves outside of, often excluded from, social circles or academic elites.

What united this disparate group was a shared love of language and a desire to be part of a prestigious crowdsourced project. Ms. Ogilvie’s history unites a choice selection of these fascinating personalities still further, turning aspects of their colorful lives into the driving force of this absorbing book."

 

"The OED was one of the world’s first crowdsourced projects—the Wikipedia of the 19th century—in which people around the English-speaking world were invited to read their country’s books and submit words for consideration on 4-by-6-inch slips of paper. Until recently, it wasn’t known how many people responded, exactly who they were or how they helped. But in 2014, several years after working as an editor on the OED, I was revisiting a hidden corner of the Oxford University Press basement where the dictionary’s archive is stored, and I came across a dusty box...

...Murray’s radical vision was for a dictionary of English comprised of words spoken and written in all parts of the world—including the U.S."

 

ते वाचुन माझ्या मनात आलेले काही विचार ... 

 

हे मराठीत का होवू शकले नाही? १९व्या शतकातच? हे "नेटके मराठी" बुलशीट कुठून आले?

याचा फायदा मी शाळेत गेल्यावर मला किती झाला असता! मी मराठी डिक्शनरी पुस्तकासारखी वाचत बसलो असतो. बहुजनांच्या भाषेबद्दल आदर निर्माण झाला असता...  १९व्या शतकात मराठी डिक्शनरी अशी, अशा सर्व स्तरातील लोकांनी तयार केली असती , तर अधुनिक महाराष्ट्राचा इतिहास वेगळा असता... ऑक्सफर्ड इंग्लिश डिक्शनरीच्या भारतीय भाषा तज्ञा बद्दल लिहली गेलेली वाक्ये पहा... ब्रिटिशांबद्दल त्यांच्या भारतातील काळ्या कामांनंतर सुद्धा जो आदर वाटतो ते अशा गोष्टी वाचून ...