Oxford Dictionary culls hundreds of words
Published 08 December, 2008, 19:39
Words linked to Christianity, the monarchy, British history and nature have been dropped from a leading dictionary for children. Among the entries that disappeared from the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary are ‘disciple’, ‘bishop’, ‘chapel’, ‘empire’, ‘abbey’ and ‘coronation’. Instead, words like ‘blog’, ‘MP3 player’, and ‘voicemail’ have appeared in their place.
According to Oxford University Press, the dictionary – which is aimed at over-sevens –should evolve to reflect the fact Britain is a modern, multicultural, multi-faith society.
The publishers believe that modern children can do without such words as dwarf, elf, altar, monk, nun, psalm, saint, sin, devil, or vicar. Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade were also erased from the dictionary. A children’s lexicon should also not contain words like beaver, boar, bullock, cheetah, goldfish, leopard, lobster, ox, oyster, panther, pelican, poodle, and spaniel
What is believed to be more important for kids are words like ‘celebrity’, ‘chatroom’, ‘bullet point’, ‘cut and paste’, ‘analogue’, ‘voicemail’, ‘attachment’, and ‘database’.
Teachers fear that the changes would make children lose touch with British heritage. The Telegraph quotes Professor Alan Smithers, the director of the centre for education and employment at Buckingham University, as saying:
“We have a certain Christian narrative which has given meaning to us over the last 2,000 years. To say it is all relative and replaceable is questionable. The word selections are a very interesting reflection of the way childhood is going, moving away from our spiritual background and the natural world and towards the world that information technology creates for us.”
The Daily Mail quotes Lisa Saunders, mother-of-four from Northern Ireland. She was shocked when, helping her son with his homework, compared several editions of the 10,000-entry dictionary and discovered a number of crucial words had disappeared over the years.
“The Christian faith still has a strong following. To eradicate so many words associated with Christianity will have a big effect on the numerous primary schools that use it,” she said. “We know that language moves on and we can't be fuddy-duddy about it, but you don't cull hundreds of important words in order to get in a different set of ICT words,” she added.
She believes children “can be so easily manipulated when they're learning things – if they don't come across these words at a young age they're never going to use them”.
Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington College said he was “stunned that words like ‘saint’, ‘buttercup’, ‘heather’ and ‘sycamore’ have all gone”.
He believes as well as being descriptive, “the Oxford Junior Dictionary has to be prescriptive too – suggesting not just words that are used but words that should be used”.
“We are looking at the loss of words of great beauty. I would rather have ‘marzipan’ and ‘mistletoe’ than ”MP3 player“,” he added.
When making their selection of words for the dictionary, Oxford University Press, with the help of lexicographers and teachers, analysed millions of words. They looked at words from children's books and school programmes to see how frequent one or another word appears before making a decision on an addition or deletion.
Another complication is that the publishers are limited by how big the dictionary can be, since it has to be light enough for children to handle.
