In a market crowded with digital wizardry, electronic dictionaries have to speak up to get noticed.

In March, dictionaries with voice functions outsold their silent rivals for the first time ever, and the trend is expected to accelerate.

Audio models nearly doubled their market share to 50.6 percent in March from 26.8 percent a year earlier, according to market researcher BCN Inc.

Industry officials cite a boom in language study and the introduction of English listening comprehension this year in the national standardized test for university admissions as driving the popularity of audio functions.

Casio Computer Co. estimates that the sales value of electronic dictionaries has been expanding about 10 percent annually for several years thanks to a steady advance in features, particularly voice.

Sales volume has been static for several years and stood at 3.3 million units in fiscal 2005, according to Casio, which has about 50 percent of the market.

Casio has incorporated voice in almost all of its spring models.

The XD-ST4800 model, launched in February, is popular among students because it can be used for mock tests of the listening component of the national standardized test. The tax-inclusive retail price is about 50,400 yen.

Another model contains sentences spoken by native speakers in seven languages, including English and Spanish.

A Casio official said that even though audio dictionaries cannot translate what someone else says in a foreign language, they can at least help users express themselves.

Canon Inc. is incorporating an enhanced Chinese language voice function, mainly targeting business users.

For the V-90 model, released in April, recordings were made under the supervision of a Chinese announcer’s school to ensure the correct tones, which change the meaning of words that have the same basic sound. Users can record their voice and compare it to the prerecording. The model’s tax-inclusive retail price is about 54,600 yen.

Sharp Corp., which has the second-largest market share, is promoting not only voice functions but also liquid crystal display panels used on its machines.

The company plans to install color LCDs on half of its models during the next two years.

While there has been some increase in direct sales to schools, the academic community is largely unsupportive of electronic dictionaries.

Many teachers consider the effort required to page through a dictionary to be part of the learning process, industry officials said.

FORESTVILLE — Villenova Grange 604 presented dictionaries to the students in Mrs. Miller’s and Mrs. Schoenl’s third-grade classes at Forestville Elementary School. The Dictionary Project is based in Charlotte, N.C. and has a goal of providing a dictionary to every third-grade student in the United States. The National Grange invites local granges to purchase and present them in their areas.

Villenova Grange is located at Balcoms Corners at the intersection of Routes 83 and 322 at the blinker light. Members of the grange are men, women and children interested in helping their communities. It is a rural fraternity originally established to improve situations after the Civil War. Oliver Hudson Kelley and the other six founders had to come this far north to find people of cooperative thinking and organized Fredonia Grange 1 on Main Street in Fredonia in 1868. Eventually, there was a grange in each of the 34 towns in Chautauqua County. Now there are only eight active granges in the county. They still promote improvement in their communities and betterment of mankind.

Lecturer (program chairman) of Villenova and New York State Grange Chaplain Martha Woolley presented the dictionaries.

While Congress was up on Capitol Hill declaring English the national language, President Bush was downtown trying to enrich it.

He reprised a word of his own coinage, “suicider,” as his own shorthand for “suicide bomber.” According to various Web sites that track the field of English studies known as “Bushisms,” he first used “suicider” in 2002 and has invoked the word frequently since.

“Suicider” is in none of the standard dictionaries, not even the 12-volume Oxford English Dictionary considered the definitive standard. At least the word is not there yet; the president is a determined individual.

He used “suicider” again Tuesday. Four times. In the White House. In the stately East Room. At a serious diplomatic function. In front of a visiting head of government, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. How much more serious can you get?

So there it is. “Suicider” is a for-real word. The Decider has spoken.