There are no words for me inside your dictionary

[vovat]

All right, here's something that I found worth addressing. The makers of Oxford's Junior Dictionary decided to reflect a "modern, multicultural, multifaith society" by removing words associated with British history and Christianity, as well as several sorts of animals and plants. If the point is to make the dictionary "multifaith," then why not add words reflecting other religions, like, say, "rabbi" or "imam"? (These particular words might well already be in this dictionary, but I think you get my point.) And while I do think some of the words they put in are good additions, why "blog"? Isn't that really a slang term anyway? And "EU" is an abbreviation for a proper name, which would make it doubly invalid in Scrabble. Now, if this were an unabridged dictionary, I'd expect those words to be in there. Bit isn't it more important for a kid to know what a raven is? How else are they going to read Poe?

Comments

[newwwoz.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

(Yeah, wonder where you found this one... Heheh...)

I would not buy this dictionary. It's exclusion of words is idiotic. Since when does a kid read a dictionary for fun? (Okay, I admit, being homeschooled, there were times...) And when were words in a dictionary supposed to reflect society? I thought dictionaries were reference material! Heck, if the ones we had when I was growing up didn't have "marzipan," I would have thought it was a piece of wax crockery when I read it in "The Nutcracker and the King of Mice."

The additions, I can see how some should be included due to heavy usage nowadays, though they should carry the note that they are slang.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Heck, if the ones we had when I was growing up didn't have "marzipan," I would have thought it was a piece of wax crockery when I read it in "The Nutcracker and the King of Mice."

Yeah, the problem with removing words that aren't in heavy use nowadays is that kids are still going to find them in older materials. It seems more important to include words people DON'T know than ones they already do.

[onesto-hotel.livejournal.com]

Wow, looking at the list of words removed and their replacements is pretty saddening.

...don't kids already know what MP3 players are? Isn't it more important to have a dictionary containing more obscure words, since those are what the kids will most likely be looking up? I agree with you too that simply removing Christian words doesn't make something "multifaith", especially since they aren't adding any relevant words from any other faiths or cultures.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

...and you'd THINK that if Christian words are not as relevant to more children nowadays, those would be the words that are MORE important to have in a dictionary, since it's more likely they'd encounter them and not know what they are!

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think so. I mean, if you'd asked me as a kid what a bishop was, I probably would have just said it was the chess piece that moved diagonally.

Etymology is fun, kids!

[suegypt.livejournal.com]

See, this proves my (your?) point with this word, bishop. Since I was little I've known that a bishop was the highest figure in the religion I was raised in, and that the word "bishop" comes from the Greek episkopos, (overseer), which in turn was used as the name of the church (Episcopal).

Re: Etymology is fun, kids!

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Well, the church I attended as a kid was Presbyterian, and they don't have bishops.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

...don't kids already know what MP3 players are?

You'd think so, but they probably also know what a porcupine is. Then again, there are nuances to that word that you wouldn't find in a simple term like "MP3 player." Sure, they can explain what "MP3" stands for (I can't say I know offhand myself), but there really isn't much history to it.

dumbing down

[suegypt.livejournal.com]

Good questions. But you must know that pandering to children and young adults is all The Powers That Be know: hence, tell them what they hear every day, and at times, what they themselves invented. As if the children are only lining up at school to be validated for what they already are, not encouraged to to imagine something really wild and new that they could be, or to know what someone has already invented and developed.

AAAARRRGGGHHHH! maybe this is why I love obscure words so much, because when i was coming up, I heard so many and found links among so many that it turned my brain to thinking about the connections among the world's words and thoughts. What fun it still is to me to find a word that makes me wonder what its origins are, what language, what culture?

Re: dumbing down

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, dictionaries don't just define words; they also explain derivations and such. And there really isn't going to be much of one for a term like "cut and paste." And is it just me, or were there a lot fewer multiple-word phrases in kids' dictionaries when I was young?

U kidz git outta mah yerd

[suegypt.livejournal.com]

Don't know. I'm so old, I only had The Dictionary. Kid's dictionaries were ridiculous to people like my parents, who expected us to learn to use the real "whatever" ASAP

Why, back in my day, we walked five miles to school in the driving snow...

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

It's not a dictionary's job to be politically correct; it's a dictionary's job to be a dictionary.