Xobdo, the first-ever online English-Assamese dictionary, has just completed two years and has over 16,000 words in English with Assamese equivalents to its credit. It also boasts of a 25,000-strong user population.

“It is not a regular dictionary approved by any university or a pundit of linguistics. It is a modern concept aimed at demolishing the man-made language barrier and thereby fuelling mutual understanding and co-operation among people from all over Northeast India,” says the vision statement of Xobdo which is written phonetically and means ‘Word’ in Assamese.

It attempts to capture languages as they are used, whether spoken, written or understood, across the Northeastern region, points out Buljit Buragohain, a research scholar at IIT, Guwahati, who is part of the team to popularise the online dictionary. Xobdo does not follow any specific dictionary or glossary published by any authority. “We are more interested in inclusion of words in everyday use,” says Buragohain, adding that a large number of words are being picked up and added everyday from well-known newspapers, magazines and works by well-known authors.

Thus, anybody can contribute a word along with its meaning to Xobdo. It is then put through a discussion among members of the Xobdo core team comprising 25 members who work on it online from different parts of the world. Leading the team is Bikram M Baruah, a petroleum engineer at Abu Dhabi.

Interestingly, even as Xobdo began primarily as an English-Assamese dictionary, it has also gradually gone multilingual, picking up words from various languages of Northeast India. “Xobdo is intended at bringing people from different linguistic and ethnic groups closer, and this is beginning to be true with people from different states of the Northeast signing up as users,” says Buragohain.