Whither the hollyhock and the dew on the queen?
So then there’s this other thing with this ‘junior dictionary’ (what’s a junior dictionary? why not just have a regular dictionary and use it as needed? what’s the point of having a special dictionary that won’t have the words that you don’t know what they mean?) that’s part of a sinister plot to get rid of words about Christianity and the queen and flowers so that there won’t be any more Britishness. Something like that.
Oxford University Press has removed words like “aisle”, “bishop”, “chapel”, “empire” and “monarch” from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like “blog”, “broadband” and “celebrity”. Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.
Really? How does Julie Henry know that OUP replaced the first words with the other words? Did OUP tell her that? Did OUP confess to having held editorial meetings in which everyone sat around saying ‘let’s drop “bishop” and replace it with “blog”‘ and ‘hoo ya let’s do that hey’?
The publisher claims the changes have been made to reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society.
Well, somebody should give them a good hard kick if they really said that, for sure, but I still doubt the whole replacement scenario.
An analysis of the word choices made by the dictionary lexicographers has revealed that entries from “abbey” to “willow” have been axed. Instead, words such as “MP3 player”, “voicemail” and “attachment” have taken their place.
Entries ‘from “abbey” to “willow”‘ – meaning what? All the words between abbey and willow? Probably not. But what then? Oh, you know – you can do the math – words like clerestory, and nuncio, and archepiscopal, and other words like tapir, and hystrix, and tamandua. But what the two categories have to do with each other…only a master at a private school could say.
Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington College, a leading private school in Berkshire, said: “I am stunned that words like “saint”, “buttercup”, “heather” and “sycamore” have all gone and I grieve it.
Well quite. Children who want to pray to Saint Buttercup have nowhere to go now. It’s heart-rending.
I’m pretty sure a Junior Dictionary limits itself to a number of high-frequency words. So some drop off, others take their place.
Or possibly the lexicographers of Oxford are the secret masterminds behind the dumbing down of the language.
I do hope they kept ‘valetudinarian’.
They have to, in case any children want to describe Mr Woodhouse in a hurry.
P.S. I sort of figured that was the idea behind the JD – I just think it’s a little silly. It seems to me to make far more sense just to have a real dictionary and let the children grow into it. But that’s why I also don’t believe in things like ‘Young Adult’ fiction.
This post made me laugh out loud.
OMG -Hysteric!!!1! Did they keep hysteric?
Awwwwww shucks, Dave.
I am screaming imagining a re-enactment of the editorial staff meeting. It would make a lovely Monty Python skit, a companion to the Hungarian Dictionary episode.
Some People apparently don’t understand the relationship between words and well, reality. And dictionaries and, well, reality.
I don’t want to break it to them, particularly not to the friendless cardinal, but even if their names don’t get listed, newts, sins, devils and duchesses will still get to exist. In my opinion, a better analysis would be that it’s a clever anti-noun conspiracy from those pinko lexicographers at Oxford University Press, the rats.
I am sorry about gorse, though.
Regular dictionaries are quite intimdating for a lot of young readers, epecially those under 10 years. They often find them difficult to use because of their size and the amount of data. The definitions can be bewildering too, with few illustrations and all sorts of alarming abbreviations and technical categories. The junior dictionary helps them get used to the idea of a dictionary and practised in using it before upgrading as their reading level develops, rather than avoiding dictionaries at all costs for the rest of their lives as most adults do. Words are chosen for f5requency and relevance. And I don’t work for OUP. Honest.
Hmm, I wonder which words a contemporary child is more likely to need to look up? Ones that are part of their everyday vocabulary, like ‘voicemail’,or ones that might be a little unfamiliar, like ‘buttercup’?
Asides being a storm in a teacup [is ‘teacup’ in?], it is a little tragic [is ‘tragic’ in?] at least. That a child would neither need nor want to know how to spell the names of common trees and flowers reminds me of the awful stories of evacuees in 1940 who had never seen grass, or a cow… A world where nature lacks ‘relevance’… Pardon me while I curse quietly.
Remember George Orwell?
Remember 1984?
remember the Memory Hole?
There are many ways to learn how to spell buttercup and sycamore. Dictionaries are not the only source. In fact, they are often the last source for a child. And, dictionaries will verify the spellings of words, but a child needs to know a lot of the spelling of a word in order to find it in a dictionary. So for teaching spelling and building vocabulary, dictionaries are not the tool of choice. (Conversation w/people who know the words is the tool of choice).
As for the size, bulk, detail, and esoteric information one finds about words and languages in a nice big adult dictionary. . . for many children this is the attraction of a big heft dictionary on a pedestal in the library! A mystery object. A quest. Some kids will want a smaller version that they can decode. Others (I was one) will sit with a big fat one, with that gilding on the edges of the papers and tiny black and white engravings, and the little half-moons to mark each section, and happily read all that shit.
Book publishers, even OUP, need to figure out how to market dictionaries, and making cute junior versions, fifteen versions, is excellent marketing, despite the silly wailing about words missing therefore reality changes.
Silly newt. Silly otter. Silly dwarf, elf, goblin.
OB, perhaps we may replace St. Buttercup with St. Wedna. St Wedna has given her name to the middle day of our week, Wednesday. She is the patroness of mediocracy. There’s so much of it around that we must commemorate her weekly, rather than annually.
And a happy St. Wedna’s Day to you.
I think the best way to make a dictionary accessible to children is to take an adult abridged dictionary, dress it up a bit, switch to a less dense font, and convince Dad and Mom to help Junior use it.
As for you, Elliot, may Woden greet you at the doors to Valhalla and upend a full cup over your head before running you through. St. Wedna’s Day, indeed!
Now looky here, St Wedna was a very affable and temperate saint, unlike Woden, and if the two of them can’t play nicely together we’ll change Wednesday to Lokiday and see how they like that.
I have a colleague who, around this time of year, puts up a sign on his classroom door reading ‘Put the Christ back in Christmas’
I habitually respond with a sign reading ‘Put the Thor back in Thorsday’. But it only works in Geordie.
A tremendous proportion of words relating to the natural world have been removed, unless the author/editor have been very selective in their lists. It’s the work of invading robots then, I’ll wager.
Joke dating back from the height of the AIDS epidemic scare:-
First kid:- I found this condom on the veranda.
Second kid:- What’s a veranda?