The Foundation Heart for Malawi, led by Dr. Steven Paas, has announced the release of the combined Chichewa to English and English to Chichewa dictionary. As pointed out earlier, the main objective of this project is to bridge the gap of communication between speakers of Chichewa/ Chinyanja (C) and speakers of English (E).
With its 730 pages in small print containing more than 35,000 entries, the dictionary is an indispensable instrument for Africans and expatriates, foreign workers and visitors, blue collar and white collar employees, farmers and town people, students and teachers, including those who deal with English and Chichewa at a scientific and scholarly level.
The main aim is to distribute this dictionary freely to Form 3 and Form 4 pupils of secondary schools in Malawi and other Chichewa/ Chinyanja speaking regions in Central Africa. Free distribution to these boys and girls is being enabled to an extent through direct financial support by a number of sponsors. Part of the project has to be financed through the selling of books. Buyers of 1-9 copies are referred to Kachere Publishers, P.O. Box 1037, Zomba, Malawi, Email: kachere at globemw.net, or to any bookshop in Malawi and Zambia. They charge retail prices.
Buyers of 10 or more copies can buy directly from the Foundation Heart for Malawi. This offer is focusing on firms, agricultural and industrial enterprises, hotels, offices, hospitals, educational organizations, NGO’s, overseas partner organizations, churches, development agencies, and any other organization that is interested in improving communication. They can buy these books for their employees and partners at a special price of MK1200 or 5 Euro per copy. If they buy 50 or more copies the price goes down to MK1000 or 4 Euro per copy. Those who are interested can order the books by mailing to: s.paas at kpnplanet.nl indicating the required number and whether you want to collect the books or have them sent to the physical address you mention. Then the Foundation Heart for Malawi will get back to you with the whole procurement procedure.
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8 users commented in " First edition of the combined Chichewa-to-English and English-to-Chichewa dictionary released "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackWow interesting stuff. This is going to be helpful for a lot of people.
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It is a good initiative taken by Foundation Heart for Malawi. This dictionary would definitely help many people including the speakers of Chichewa who are interested to know English to get more knowledge about outside world.
I think, the foundation should also create content in Chichewa language and upload it in Internet, and thus, the speakers of Chichewa language would be bale to get to know about outer world through their own language. This will mostly help the students.
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I’m not sure the internet idea will work. Malawi is extremely poor, so who is going to be able to access it, and won’t they be able to speak english already if they can access it??
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Clement Nyirenda says:
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:16 pm
@Mattwi: The Internet idea can work for anyone who has an Internet connection regardless of location. About Malawi, you may wish to know that the country is getting connected to the Internet at a very fast pace. In fact, more than 10% of my monthly traffic comes from Malawi. The other point is that apart from folks who are learning English, this dictionary will come in handy even for those who just want to look up the meaning of particular words in either English or Chichewa.
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Fair enough. I stand corrected.
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I am sure this book will surely emit the communication gap between speakers of Chichewa/ Chinyanja and speakers of English. one thing I want to know is it available on amazon.com.
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I sponsor 3 children in Malawi Africa and would love to be able to send them letters in their language to read. Is there any free program on the internet that I could type a letter to them in English that would translate it to Chichewa so I could print it off and mail it to them? Thanks!
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Clement Nyirenda says:
January 11th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
I am afraid such systems are not yet available.
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I would really appreciate if you could use your name when commenting.Using just keywords makes your comment seem spammy, and it's liable to get deleted.Please read my comment policy for more details.Many thanks for your cooperation!
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