A Seminar at UoB Reviews the Contents of the Bahraini Dialect Thesaurus

University of Bahrain – Sakhir (Trainee Mohammed Al-Miari)
April 24, 2022

A seminar at UoB reviewed the latest developments in the research database project that documents the Bahraini dialect. The seminar entitled “Bahrain Thesaurus” was recently organized by the College of Arts via the Microsoft Teams platform.

The thesaurus is a broad blog of texts written in a specific language or dialect and is electronically available. It can be considered a research tool that helps in conducting scientific research.

Both Dr. Dana Abdullah Abdul Rahim, Director of the English Language Center, UoB and Assistant Professor of English Language Department at UoB, Dr. Latifa Shamsan Shamsan talked about the “Bahrain Thesaurus” project, which they are currently developing. Dr. Abdul Rahim explained that the methodology of the project relied on compiling recordings of Bahraini series, talk shows and conversations on the Internet in the Bahraini dialect, within different time periods, and then reducing these materials to writing.

Dr. Abdul Rahim added that the collection of texts will continue in a permanent basis. She welcomed any assistance in this national project, through sending texts of the Bahraini dialect, to be reviewed and added to the thesaurus.

For her part, Dr. Shamsan stated, “About 350 students of linguistics courses at UoB participated in the project through collecting and recording words of the Bahraini dialect. The project gave the students the opportunity to become familiar with the linguistic uses in the Bahraini dialect and raised their awareness of the importance of preserving and documenting the Bahraini dialect for the future generations. The two researchers lauded the increased interest of students working in the project and their keenness in the Bahraini dialect.

The Dean of the College of Arts, Dr. Abdulaziz Mohammad Bulaila, commended the project, and urged the two researchers to further classify the texts according to regions and cities, given the differences in the Bahraini dialects from one region to another.

The head of the Department of Arabic Language and Islamic Studies at the University, Dr. Dheya Abdullah Al-Kaabi, who previously accomplished the project of collecting Bahraini folk tales along 10 years, proposed that the thesaurus would also be audible, to help pronounce words correctly.

It is worthy to note that work in the Bahrain Thesaurus project began in 2016 and that the number of words collected amounted to 30,000 by 2017 and reached half a million by 2022.

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