International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in cooperation with the Office of Language Commissioner and UNMIK has organised a presentation and discussion regarding the development of an online Albanian-Serbian-Albanian dictionary, the first of its kind in the last thirty years.
Svetlana Rakic, IOM project coordinator, said experts from Kosovo and Serbia have been involved in this project.
“As part of this project for inclusion of communities we have identified a barrier in this direction, we identified the platform called ‘vocup’. We began developing ‘vocup’ with the assistance of the British Embassy and of UNMIK. The dictionary will have up to 20,000 words and will be ready by September,” she said.
Journalist Una Hajdari said there was no initiative in Kosovo for learning Serbian language.
“Unlike my colleagues, I speak two languages and report in both. Something that needs to be underlines when we speak about shortcomings and translations in the two languages is the fact that after the war period there was no initiative from either the Serbian or Albanian side to learn the other language,” she said noting the fact that the last bilingual dictionary dates back to 1985.
Slavisa Mladenovic, language commissioner with the Government of Kosovo, said he was convinced this initiative will serve cohabitation between Kosovars and Serbs.
“When we began the first analyses about the lack of respect of the Law on the Use of Languages, we reached the conclusion that there is a lack of capacities in Kosovo and that there are no resources they can use in their work. Our work focus is the administration. We have asked for the reasons behind the law on languages non-implementation. I am glad donors have noted this need and I consider that those who wish to learn the language will be assisted by this and will provide an opportunity for their professional development,” he said.
The online Albanian-Serbian-Albanian dictionary will be published in September. The dictionary will consist of around 20,000 words.