About the online dictionary

What is this?

This is a digital edition of the Qaamuuska Af-Soomaaliga (the Somali dictionary) published by Centro Studi Somali, Università degli Studi Roma Tre (ROMA TRE-PRESS, 2012, ISBN 978-88-97524-02-1). It lets you quickly search 46,314 words — their meanings and grammatical information — from any browser.

Who prepared it?

The original dictionary was prepared by a team of researchers led by:

• Annarita Puglielli — project director & editor-in-chief (Università Roma Tre)
• Cabdalla Cumar Mansuur — editor-in-chief
• Research committee — Axmed Cabdullaahi Axmed, Ciise Maxamed Siyaad, Axmed Cartan Xaange, Maryan Faarax Warsame, Dahabo Faarax Xasan, Cabdi Daahir Afey, and others
• Many editors — who collected, defined, and verified the entries

The project was part of the Studi Somali Italian–Somali research collaboration that began in 1977–78.

How was this online edition built?

The printed book was converted into structured data using a Natural Language Processing (NLP) pipeline:

1. Extraction — the dictionary text was extracted from the source PDF.
2. Parsing — each word was split into its headword, part of speech, gender, conjugation/plural, and individual senses.
3. Structuring — the data was stored in a MySQL database — 46,314 entries and 32,801 definitions.
4. Presentation — this Laravel application serves the data in a simple, searchable interface.

Community contributions

The dictionary is living. Registered users can add more explanation, similar words, example sentences, and words from different dialects. Community contributions are clearly marked and shown at the bottom of each word's page, so they are kept separate from the original dictionary text.

Credits & licence

The lexical content belongs to the original authors (Centro Studi Somali, Roma Tre). This online edition is provided for educational and research purposes. Please cite the original source when using it.