The online Finno-Ugric conversation book was presented by the group of programmers from Mari El and Komi Republic in the international conference devoted to innovation projects in the national education, held in Syktyvkar on February 9. The original innovation project was created on the basis of the Russian media-centre FINUGOR on the initiative and with the financial support of Ministry of National Politics of Komi Republic.
The conversation book is available on the web-site of the Finno-Ugric digital library in phrasebook.fulib.ru. The conversation book contains over 1000 words and collocations, most frequently used in everyday life, in 7 Finno-Ugric languages. The list of languages contains Hungarian, Karelian, Komi, Mari, Moksha, Udmurt, Erzya as well as Russian, traditionally used by the Finno-Ugric peoples for interregional communication. The works on the compilation of the conversation book and its translation were conducted by the experienced linguists from different countries. In the nearest future there are supposed to be added the Finnish, Khanty, Mansi, Komi-Permyak and English versions.
According to the project manager Andrei Chemyshev, the programmers involved in the project realization are working out versions for mobile devices as well as downloadable versions to be installed on the computers. It is also planned to increase the amount of lexical units to 2000 by means of including some cross-cultural explanations, as well as adding the versions of the conversation book in other Finno-Ugric languages and the sound recordings of the words and phrases.
This innovation project has a free license, which enables it to be applied and developed independently by all the people interested. The trial version is available for free on the web-site of the Finno-Ugric digital library FULIB.RU and on the web-portal of digital software of the Finno-Ugric languages MARLAMUTER.RU
“We are open to collaboration with departments and organizations, institutes of higher education and other scientific institutions of the Finno-Ugric countries and regions for further development of the conversation book. – remarked A. Chermyshev. – Granting financial support and partnership of scientists and common Internet-users the conversation book will be improved and become an indispensable communication tool.”