WILLEMSTAD - 275 photos have been added to the Papiamento word bank, Banko di Palabra, thanks to a grant from the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund Caribbean Area (PBCCG).
The digital Banko di Palabra was developed in 2006 as a spell checker for Firefox and Open Office. Two hundred photos of plants and animals have been added with the aid of the subsidy from the Culture Funds. 75 photos of musical instruments have also been posted. The images were created with the help of wildlife expert Michelle da Costa Gomez, Lida Pandt and NAAM.
Thanks to the photos, internet users can now see the corresponding photos when searching in Papiamento. In the future, anyone will be able to add photos to the Banko di Palabra.
“Because children in the digital age are increasingly searching the internet in their own language, it is necessary that more 'content' such as texts and photos are placed online in Papiamento”, according to the organization. “For example, a search for the word 'kachó' will only yield a picture of a dog, while a search for 'dog', 'dog' or 'perro' will yield thousands of pictures. This is one of the reasons to add more photos to the Banko di Palabra.”