To the FutureDictionaries
August went past so fast for me working with four dictionaries. Sigh..... Finally, here they are:
Burmese dictionary
Burmese dictionary is mainly based on the Myanmar-English dictionary published in 1993 by the Myanmar Language Commission and republished in 1996 by Dunwoody Press (ISBN 1-881265-47-1)
Mon dictionary
Mon dictionary is based on the Dictionary of Modern Spoken Mon by H.L. Shorto (1962, Oxford University Press)
Shan dictionary
Shan dictionary is based on the Shan-English dictionary by Sao Tern Moeng (ISBN 0-931745-92-6)
Karen dictionary
Karen dictionary is based on the Drum Karen-English Student dictionary published by the Drum Publication Group in 2008.
If you do use them and find any errors or mistakes, please let me know.
Hope
From New York Times regarding Barack Obama's victory for the Democratic nomination:
"We as black people now have hope that we have never, ever had," Mr. Sam-Brew [an immigrant from Ghana] said. "I have new goals for my little girl. She can't give me any excuses because she's black."
Emma Lazarus's The New Colossus
Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) was an American poet. She wrote "The New Colossus" in 1883, that is now engraved on a bronze plaque on a wall in the base of the Statue of Liberty.
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Paul Auster wrote that "Bartholdi's gigantic effigy was originally intended as a monument to the principles of international republicanism, but 'The New Colossus' reinvented the statue's purpose, turning Liberty into a welcoming mother, a symbol of hope to the outcasts and downtrodden of the world".
At the Statue of Liberty in New York
Burmese-English dictionary
I have been busy working with the visual input system for our dictionaries. Check out the beta version for Burmese.
Go to http://burmese.sealang.net
Click on the keyboard icon (on your left panel) as shown in the following picture.
Click on the input characters so you can see the prediction. Please wait for a fraction of a second (because of the server delay) after you click on the characters. You will see the predicted Burmese words based on the dictionary order as in the following picture.
Warning about fonts
- If you use Zawgyi font, you won't see the correct rendering of some characters, especially subscript forms. Zawgyi is incompatible with the Unicode standard.
- Our dictionary uses the old Unicode standard with UTN #11 (the documentations are listed below)
- Representing Myanmar In Unicode, Details and Examples by Martin Hosken and Maung Tun Tun Lwin
- Myanmar Unicode Standard
- The old unicode standard was implemented in some fonts, such as Padauk, Myanmar1 and MyMyanmar. Get MyMyanmar here.
Photos by Rev. Wo Le
If you are like me and crazy about country life in Burma, here are some pictures. Rev. Wo Le took them on his trips to churches all over Burma as his capacity as the secretary of Lisu Baptist Convention.
Church
School
Water
Innocent lives
Life style
Trucks
Carts
Photos
A building on the bank of Chao Phraya river (Photo by Beauty Shwe)
A Burmese lady (Photo source is unknown and may have copyrights held by the photographer)
West meets East
I went to Chatuchak weekend market today. It was probably my fourth or fifth visit.
Chatuchak is a very famous tourists destination in Bangkok. A visit to Chatuchak is like an exotic cultural experience for tourists, especially for westerners from developed countries. Everything from Thai silk to modern fake Levi jeans can be found at the clothing stall booths as far as the eyes can see. The shops sell almost everything under the sun --- antique handicrafts and modern furniture, books and collectable items, plants and pets, and you name it.
The visits to Chatuchak made me think about the cultural differences between people from developing and developed countries. Western tourists would look for antique ethnic handicrafts whereas the locals would not even care about those sections of the market.
In my observations, people from industrialized countries tend to appreciate this kind of picture.
Sunset in Bagan (Photo source is unknown and may have copyrights held by the photographer)
Life in Burma (Photo by Rev. Wo Le)
On the contrary, people from developing countries tend to be impressed by this kind of picture.
Shanghai Skyscrapers at night (Picture taken from http://www.cepolina.com)
Developing countries want to develop faster and faster at the cost of natural and cultural beauty. China, for example, is growing very fast at the cost of social stability, the income gap between the rich and poor becoming wider and wider [1]. They even want to build more dams in Burma [2].
Big international businesses are moving to less developed countries not only for cheap labor, but also for less strict environmental rules and regulations.
Developed countries, on the other hand, want to go back to history and preserve natural beauty. To tell you the truth, the air quality in Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA (where I went to college) is better than the air quality in my home town, Mudon, Mon State in Burma. Thanks to cheap Thailand and Chinese made motorbikes and no rules regarding air pollution, the air quality in my hometown in Burma is getting worse these days. The fact that every factory in Fort Wayne, Indiana, has to follow strict environmental rules and regulations has made the environment very nice for the citizens of the town.
I, for one, am looking forward to the days when leaders in developing countries, Asean in particular, will start to talk about putting the interest and basic human rights of their own people ahead of the economic development. I hope that our region will grow without sacrificing our natural and cultural beauty.
Photos by Wawlay
I wanted to post some pictures by Rev. Wo Le. He took these pictures while he was travelling all over Burma visting Lisu churches. I hope to remind you of village life style in Burma.
A big tree
A village (rather a town?) in Burma
A day in the village
A house in the village
A kid in the village
Baptism (village style)
Village family
Chef
Chef tasting food
Sunset
Fetching water
Bathing
Kitchen
Teapot
Dinner
Old pictures from the US
I found my old pictures of my mission trip to Shiprock, New Mexico. I took the trip while I was in the States. We stayed at a Navajo Indian church and here are some pictures.
Shiprock, New Mexico
Lwin Moe after painting an old Navajo Indian lady's house in Shiprock, NM
Pastor Eric Lee talking to our group
A Hogan in Shiprock, NM
Lwin Moe and Molly repairing the roof of an old Navajo lady's house
Mission Team after painting an old Navajo lady's house
My two (adopted) sisters
Heather, Molly and Lwin at Albuquerque airport
Lwin Moe with a Navajo family
With Navajo ladies from Mesa View Church
Jared and Lwin
Lwin in Shiprock, NM
Blue Sky and a tree near the Day Care Center we worked
A beautiful field
Mesa Verdae National Park in Colorado
Mesa Verdae National Park in Colorado
Mesa Verdae National Park in Colorado
Mesa Verdae National Park in Colorado
Four Corners (Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado)
Four Corners (Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado)
From Four Corners (Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado)
Lwin Moe after Missoin Trip
Lwin Moe after Missoin Trip with Diana (host-mom)
