They say that when the Tower of Babel, projected to scrape the heaven, was being built, God, displeased by the overarching ambition of perhaps the first realtors of humankind, confused the language of the builders.

Since then, human beings have spoken in varied tongues and peoples have been divided by languages.

But thanks to human ingenuity, lexicons were devised and it is possible to learn another language without leaving one?s hometown. Now, thanks to the Internet, it has become easier to comprehend another language without even buying dictionaries, provided, of course, one has invested in the right kind of software.

In an effort to provide online dictionaries of south Asian languages, two consortiums ? Centre for South Asian Libraries (CSAL) and a linked organisation, Digital South Asian Libraries (DSAL) ? have joined hands. Its constituent members are primarily Chicago and Columbia universities and British Library.

Its south Asian collaborators are Roja Muthiah Research Library, Chennai, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (CSSS), Calcutta, Modern Purashkar Pustakalay, Kathmandu, and other institutes.

Without any funds or an office of its own, CSAL functions on grants from different institutions, such as Council for American Overseas Research Centre, Chicago, says Abhijit Bhattacharya of CSSS, who represents CSAL in eastern India and Bangladesh.

The digital dictionary of the south Asia project began in 2003 and the target was to cover all the major languages of the region, including Baluch, Dogri, Pali and Pashto, which were to be digitally converted to Unicode form for online availability.

Copyrights could have posed a problem and for the Bengali dictionary, a memorandum of understanding will be signed soon. Owing to some errors, there is no active link yet with Jnanendra Mohana Dasa Bangla Bhasar Abhidana.

The dictionaries, available online since January 9, are the latest Samsad edition of Sailendra Biswas?s Bengali-to-English dictionary and Samsader Bangala Uchcharan Abhidana at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/ dictionaries.

Some of the pending languages are Assamese and Oriya among the 34 languages covered by the current project. In future, 18 languages will be included, among which are Ardhamagadhi, Romani and Kuki-Chin.

If one is looking for a particular word (romanised following international phonetic code), the hyperlink takes one straight to the dictionary page. A major challenge is turning left-to-right script, such as Urdu and Persian into Unicode. These are still in Ascii (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) II format. There is interconnectivity among all the languages.