Acknowledgements

     I would like to express my gratitude to Director He Lifeng of the Yunnan Minority Languages Committee for his leadership in the Naxi language research cooperative project with SIL East Asia Group and the Yunnan Minority Languages Committee from 1999 to 2008. Without this leadership, this dictionary would not exist.

     The help and cooperation of our Naxi friend and colleague, Lillian Zhao, was invaluable. Ms. Zhao also works at the Yunnan Minority Languages Committee and so was involved with the cooperative project. Among many other things she did over the years of the project, her proofreading of the Naxi in this dictionary was extremely helpful. She contributed her insight into the meanings of words and gave solid criticism where needed.

     During the 16 years of compiling and editing this dictionary, many Naxi friends provided invaluable help. These friends answered questions, provided stories and texts, and helped with research in many ways. Our friends and some of their friends come from many different sub-dialect areas and so gave a much wider range of data than would have been possible without their assistance. These people include Wang Meifang, Wang Meifang's father, Wang Jianqiong, Yang Shilian, He Qunwei, Wang Chunling, Benjamin He, He Shunqing, my former teachers Li Mingzhong and the late He Jisun, and also the people of "our" village of nine years, Meeqddiuqwe, who so warmly adopted us.

     Few dictionary projects are done by one person, and this is no exception. During the last seven years I had a "right-hand" assistant, Shirley Hoq. Shirley caught on quickly to the work of lexicography and proved invaluable in a multitude of ways. Among the many things she did for me, the three most prominent are perhaps her legwork in gathering data and doing further research, her insights into the language, and her contribution of most of the Tai'an Village data.

     Several other Naxi language scholars shared their insights and even some of their data. For their contributions to this dictionary, I want to express my sincere gratitude to Ms. He Jiezhen, Professor Yang Huandian, and Dr. Alexis Michaud.

     Before a dictionary like this can be published, all aspects of it need proofreading. Over years of working, inconsistencies seep in and typos go unnoticed. Likewise, the front matter needs careful editing. I want to express my thanks to my team of proofreaders: Laura Coull, Jackie Pinson, Heidi Pinson, Kathryn Kircher, Greg Huteson, Sharon Gallant, Edwin Lam, Keith Slater, Jeff Green, CJ Searsy, and Rebecca Roetman.

     My data for this dictionary was stored in an Access database which I designed. But I needed a method for exporting the data to a file formatted as a dictionary. The first of these methods was a set of computer programs written by my father, Walter Pinson. Later he revised those programs with the help of my two oldest sons, William and Keith Pinson. Since that time, Keith has become the sole programmer. I am immensely grateful for all the time and energy Keith has poured into this project. I would be remiss not to mention SIL East Asia Group's own IT guru, Victor Roetman, who made the finishing touches to Keith's programs. He has also helped with many of the formatting issues and other technical computer issues.

     I am also grateful to David Sun for his translation of the front matter of this dictionary into Chinese.

     Last but not least of the people who helped bring this dictionary to publication is SIL East Asia Group's Publication Coordinator, Cynthia Shum. Cynthia very skillfully managed the whole process of publication. The depth of my gratitude to her is beyond words.

     As money is essential for all projects of this sort, I must mention that the funds for this publication were provided by SIL East Asia Group and a special friend from Singapore.

     Any errors that this dictionary contains are my own responsibility. I would gratefully receive any comments or notifications of errors that the reader may wish to bring to my attention.