Kaufmann's Visayan-English Dictionary is probably one of the best
dictionaries ever produced for Hiligaynon. It includes a large
vocabulary, and, even more important for students of the language,
provides example sentences for almost every word included. Its mayor
drawback today is that it is somewhat out-of-date. Hiligaynon has changed
considerably in the 70 years since the dictionary was first published. A
large number of words in this dictionary have fallen out of use, and many
younger speakers will not know them. Fortunately, most of the new words
introduced into the language are loans from English, and can be easily
recognized by English speakers.
Instructions for Use
On the CD-Rom are included a number of versions of the dictionary in
various formats. Each of these has certain benefits and drawbacks.
The HTML format contains a html page for each page in the dictionary.
Each page shows four lines of text and a page image. The first line
provides the title of the dictionary, the second simple previous and next
links, to go to the previous and next page, respectively. The third line
provides links to the first page of each letter, while the following line
provides links to each page within the current letter.
To locate a word, you proceed as if you would in a normal dictionary. You
first go to the letter with which your word starts, and then look at the
top line of the page image, which contains the first and last word on
that page. Just as in a paper dictionary, you now make a guess where the
word should appear in the dictionary, and click on a page number as you
guess is appropriate. You can then refine your search by clicking the
previous or next button, until you have located your word.
The PDF file kaufmann.pdf, for which you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader,
allows you to search for words in the text of the dictionary. This will
help you to use the dictionary in the reverse direction. Note that this
PDF file uses text behind page-images, which means that you will see the
original page-images. The text hidden behind it, which is used for
searching, has been generated using optical character recognition (OCR)
software. Since OCR software is still not perfect, some words might not
be found correctly.
The raw text from the OCR software has also been included in the
directory /text. Please note that this text is still full of OCR
transcription errors, and will require considerable editing to be usable.
Finally, also included are the original 600 DPI scans as TIFF format
files in the directory /tiff. These images can be used to process through
optical character recognition (OCR) software, or for printing individual
pages.
Jeroen Hellingman
Aletta Jacobsstraat 5
3404 XD IJsselstein
Phone: +31 30 6875444
Email: jeroen@bohol.ph
Website: www.bohol.ph
John Kaufmann: Visayan-English Dictionary
Hiligaynon, also known as Ilongo, is the language spoken by roughly seven
million people, or about ten percent of the Philippine population, mainly
on the island of Panay and in the province of Negros Occidental, and a
number of smaller surrounding islands in the Visayan region of the
Philippines. The language is sometimes also called Visayan, but this name
is rather confusing, since it is also used for a number of other
languages spoken in the region, such as Cebuano and Waray-Waray.
Visayan-English
Dictionary
(Kapulúñgan BinisayáIninglís)
by
John Kaufmann
Iloilo, Philippines
[1934]
Containing more than eighteen thousand
words of the Hiligáynon and Hiniráya
dialects as spoken in and around Iloilo,
besides many Spanish words, which on
account of being frequently used by the
Visayans may be said to have become part
of the Visayan language.