The Cultural Village Foundation (Katara) completed collecting the first 10,000 words of the Qatar Cultural Dictionary, for which the work on the first phase began earlier.
The Qatar Cultural Dictionary project aims to protect the Qatari dialect with its old vocabulary for subsequent generations and to preserve the valuable inventory of the Qatari dialect, which carries all prevailing values and customs of society, based on the promotion of vernacular dialect that is not inconsistent with the preservation of classical native Arabic language, the mother of this dialect.
The Qatar Cultural Dictionary includes linguistic information that explains the linguistic origin and development in the local dialect of this origin.
It also includes pictures, graphs, indexes and other complementary components.
General Manager of Katara Dr Khalid bin Ibrahim al-Sulaiti said that the aim of the Qatar Cultural Dictionary project and its related research and study is to develop national awareness of the importance of cultural heritage by establishing an integrated culture that links each Qatari landmark and vocabulary to their linguistic, heritage and cultural significance.
He added that the project connects all the Qatari landmarks and designations with their fluent linguistic origins and their dialectic and cultural dimensions, and provides a scientific cultural asset that highlights the originality and roots of the Qatari vocabulary.
The Qatar Cultural Dictionary also includes language information that delves further into the linguistic origin and evolution of the names of places, locations and vocabulary used all in Qatari society by referring to the origin of the word in ancient Arabic dictionaries, Arabic poetry, and dictionaries of ancient countries and places.
It also includes dialectical investigation of local pronunciation of names of places and locations, tracking the development of eloquent origin and tracking the cultural civilisation of the authentic Qatari dialect.
The project, which is supervised by an elite of national cadres in a number of different specialties, started as an idea of a survey collection of the names of country places and sites, from cities and villages, fountains, castles and wells, and collecting vocabulary for daily life, past and present from Qatari dialect, in addition to vocabulary that is inherited, sea vocabulary, such as diving, ships and fish, and vocabulary for birds, plants and trees, as well as professions, foods and tools, and arranging them alphabetically, studying them academically in explaining their linguistic origins and the dialectical development of their origins and searching for them in their heritage in ancient books spanning 500 years.
The Qatar Cultural Dictionary is one of the most important Katara projects that are in line with the Qatar National Vision 2030.
