Got an invaluable treasure

While browsing for a Nias dictionary, I stumbled upon the abebooks website. And indeed it listed the old dictionary I was looking for for puchase. And so I did just that.

After the completed transaction I found out, that the seller is in Delhi, India, and it took 25 days for delivery. Hmmm....

Apart from the worst customer service I have ever had (and will make sure I will not purchase anything from them anymore, since they don't deserve my money with such terrible customer service) the dictionary arrived.

To my surprise it is not the original print, but a newly printed version of the old book. As you can see at the left page of the photo above, the company is specialised in printing old books. I suppose this is legal, as the author and the print was over 100 years ago, so it should be now on public domain.

Despite the turn and twist to Delhi, I have to admit that this is really an extraordinary treasure for Nias language. As far as I am aware of, this is the first proper dictionary written for people who have studied Latin and modern European languages. There are other Nias dictionaries, but none of them has dissected the language as precise as Sundermann did. I wonder whether this has to do with German precision engineering. 

Moreover despite its old age, I was also surprised to find out that most of the Nias words there are still in use. Only some are not very familiar anymore. However these not-so-familiar-any-more words serve well in the quest to find new Nias words for many Indonesian vocabulary which do not have translation in Nias.

So I am very pleased to have this Nias-German dictionary and will use it as a reference to create Indonesian-Nias (and probably English-Nias) dictionary.