| The Mary Haas Thai Dictionary Project |
| The Thai Dictionary Project formally commenced in 1951. It originally received funding from the (now defunct) UC Berkeley Institute of East Asiatic Studies and the American Council of Learned Societies. Support from the US Office of Education (predecessor of the US Department of Education, primary sponsor of the SEAlang Library), began in 1960. |
| The TDP team was headed by Prof. Mary R. Haas of the University of California, Berkeley. It included George V. Grekoff, Ruchira C. Mendiones, Waiwit Buddhari, Joseph R. Cooke, and Soren C. Egerod, all of whom went on to become well-known linguists and/or Thailand specialists. |
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The TDP data incorporates two dictionaries: a student dictionary published
as the "Thai-English Student's Dictionary" (Stanford University Press 1964),
and an incomplete and unpublished unabridged dictionary.
The published text was copyrighted by Mary R. Haas (RE-579-194), and
notes that:
"This work was developed pursuant to a contract between the
United States Office of Education and the University of California,
Berkeley, and is published with permission of the United States
Office of Education."
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| CRCL Inc. has archived the original Thai Dictionary Project data in our Bangkok field office since it was was given to us in 1998, by Prof. James Matisoff of the University of California, Berkeley (following the death of Prof. Haas in 1996). It consists of hundreds of thousands of typed and handwritten slips of paper, some dated back to the 1940's. The full text of the published dictionary is included; these slips are stamped "ST DICT." |
| Haas notes that she made some corrections in the second printing of the dictionary - published, as noted above, with the permission of the Office of Education - so in the interests of accuracy this serves as the final authority for the SEAlang Library. |
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CRCL has updated and extended the TDP data in a variety of ways, including:
- reanalyzing the phonetic representation in accordance with Haas's
later comments (and modern practice);
- correcting spelling errors, as well as many inconsistencies in
defining and labeling individual entries and cross-references;
- extending the data's coverage to include tens of thousands of
new terms coined (and disseminated by the Thai Royal Institute)
in the past four decades;
- enriching individual entries in a number of ways, including extending
the etymological analysis;
- XML-tagging the material, and making it Web-accessible.
Our derived work will be continue to be identified with Prof. Haas, of
course, and will be freely available for reference and research.
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| Prof. Mary Haas was a true giant of Southeast Asian linguistics and lexicography. Continued development of the Thai Dictionary Project data demonstrates its ongoing importance to Thai Studies, and is a fitting and timely tribute for the tenth anniversary of her death in 2006. |
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Copyright notices The Mary R. Haas Thai Dictionary Project data was compiled pursuant to a contract between the United States Office of Education and the University of California, Berkeley, and is used with permission of the United States Department of Education, International Education Programs Service. |