Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation - Taberd Dictionary
南 越 洋 合 字 彙
DICTIONARIUM
ANAMITICO-LATINUM
ADITUM A J. L. TABERD
Preface Full text Radical lookup Quốc ngữ - Nôm lookup List of botanical words

The first fascicle or installment of the Dictionarium Anamitico Latinum was published by the J.Marshnam printing house in 1884 (Serampore, India). And, the most recent edition was 2004 with the publishing support by Center for National Culture Studies and Literature Publishing House. This is an old and precious dictionary which recorded Nom script or Quoc Ngu script existed 200 years ago. One special thing is that this dictionary was composed by a French bishop named AJ.L Taberd. Taberd dictionary has come to be regarded as authoritative and in order to learn, research and preserve the treasure of Quoc Ngu and Nom scripts. Furthermore, this dictionary contains a considerable amount of old words which may not be found in Vietnamese language nowadays. Thus, the purpose of digitizing and building e book for original Taberd dictionary is very essential to store, preserve and broadcast extensively.

Online Taberd dictionary has been built relying on the reprint version in the year of 2004 with the method of digitizing image pages of Taberd dictionary on the basis of origin. Again, it should be noted that this is very useful lookup tool for scholars, researchers in the sphere of social science in general and researchers in the field of special language like Nom script in particular.

Online Taberd dictionary is formed with an aim to searching through directly glyphs in accordance with original images. Apart from the plague and instruction parts, we focus on structuring lookup tool with two main parts:

Part 1: Radical-stroke search
Part 2: Quoc Ngu search

As for radical stroke lookup, the users just need to set the parameters for a radical-stroke search of the on-line Taberd dictionary’ database, the remaining strokes will be automatically located following the number of pages, columns by the program. In term of Quoc Ngu lookup, there exists a little bit differences, the readers just have to type Quoc ngu glyphs that they want to search.

Notably, in the later parts of the dictionary, we add further lookup tool for names of medicinal herbs, plants appeared in An Nam at that period or other articles such as radical stroke catalogue, maps…One thing to note is that Taberd dictionary illustrates Quoc Ngu and Nom scripts from the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. Thus, many old Vietnamese characters are also identified (e.g. ym, yả, luựt, khuia, khuiếch, huiên). Hoping that this e book will provide the readers with much more easier access in the work of searching information. This also will be a practical, user-friendly tool for people who have passion for learning, researching language or Vietnamese writing.

However, in the process of building online Taberd dictionary, errors are inevitable and we look forward with deep-felt thanks to absorbing valuable contributions from all the readers inside and outside the country in further improving this e-dictionary.