17. The First Dictionary

Oct 18, 2004

To effectively spread their faith in Asia, America's Baptist missionaries realised they had to study the native languages. Dr Karl Gutzlaff led the way in the 19th century, becoming fluent in Chinese. John Taylor Jones followed his example when, in 1833, he became the first of the US missionaries to arrive in Siam.

During his first years here, Jones devoted much of his time compiling the first Siamese-English dictionary. Two of his colleagues, JH Chandler - who moved to Bangkok from Mawlamyine, Burma, in 1840 - and Jesse Caswell, developed it further.

The two missionaries translated Jones' dictionary, transforming it by 1846 into what is regarded as the first fully Siamese dictionary.

Anake Nawingamune, acclaimed for his writings on traditional Thai arts and culture, suggests that an all-Siamese dictionary could have been written earlier by a French Catholic missionary named Laneau during the reign of King Narai of Ayutthaya, but no one has actually seen a copy.

In 1854, the French Catholic missionary Jean Baptiste Pallegoix published a dictionary titled "Sappajana Pasa Thai" that encompassed Siamese, Latin, French and English.

A few years later, Samuel Gamble McFarland began work on a new English- Siamese dictionary. It was later improved by his sons, George and Edwin, who in 1865 also manufactured the first typewriter to use Thai fonts.

According to Anake, around 11 Siamese-Siamese and Siamese-English dictionaries were created by American missionaries between 1865 and 1872. In 1873, five years after King Rama IV passed away, the prolific American preacher and physician Dr Dan Beach Bradley, by then 69 years old, started working on a long-envisioned project: the "Akraphithansap" (Dictionary of the Siamese Language).

He undertook the treatise with the help of one Ajarn Tat, but after Bradley died on June 23, 1873, his son Dan F Bradley saw it through to completion, in that same year. It comprised 828 pages and 40,000 words.

Modern academics agree that it was the best all-Thai dictionary of that era, the first to compend almost every word used by ordinary Siamese, including slang. It also strove to standardise the language by placing characters and sounds in the order used in Thai grammar of the time.

The first all-Siamese dictionary compiled by a Thai - a masterful work by Phraya Pariyatthamthada - appeared in 1891, during the Fifth Reign.

NITHINAND YORSAENGRAT

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