Today is one of those days.
Every so often the Oxford University Press revises its children's dictionary and puts out a new version. All well and good. Until you look at what they've taken out, and what they've added:
Words taken out:
Carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe
Dwarf, elf, goblin
Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, vicar
Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade
adder, ass, beaver, boar, budgerigar, bullock, cheetah, colt, corgi, cygnet, doe, drake, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow, mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, panther, pelican, piglet, plaice, poodle, porcupine, porpoise, raven, spaniel, starling, stoat, stork, terrapin, thrush, weasel, wren.
Acorn, allotment, almond, apricot, ash, bacon, beech, beetroot, blackberry, blacksmith, bloom, bluebell, bramble, bran, bray, bridle, brook, buttercup, canary, canter, carnation, catkin, cauliflower, chestnut, clover, conker, county, cowslip, crocus, dandelion, diesel, fern, fungus, gooseberry, gorse, hazel, hazelnut, heather, holly, horse chestnut, ivy, lavender, leek, liquorice, manger, marzipan, melon, minnow, mint, nectar, nectarine, oats, pansy, parsnip, pasture, poppy, porridge, poultry, primrose, prune, radish, rhubarb, sheaf, spinach, sycamore, tulip, turnip, vine, violet, walnut, willow
Words put in:
Blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste, analogue
Celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, creep, citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate, EU, drought, brainy, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, bungee jumping, committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro
Apparatus, food chain, incisor, square number, trapezium, alliteration, colloquial, idiom, curriculum, classify, chronological, block graph
Sorry for the huge block, but you need to see the full list. To get the full effect, however, you need this quote from the Telegraph article: "The publisher claims the changes have been made to reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society."
Ah. I see. In order to placate all those non-Christians, references to Christmas (including the innocuous "cracker" will be deleted. In order to placate all those non-Britishers, references to the monarchy, the titular head of the United Kingdom and Canada, will also be deleted. Also references to every-day Christianity-- which happens to be the state religion (Anglicanism). But wait, we've already deleted Her Majesty, who is one of the heads of the Church of England, so deleting the Church is twice as easy! And, in order to be modern, we'll take out... well, plants and animals aren't interesting to children, so let's replace them with things like "tolerate", "MP3 player" (seriously, who needed a dictionary entry for that? One would think that "player" and a knowledge of the alphabet and the numbers 1-3 would have sufficed), and "biodegradable".
There's also this gem of a quote: "We are limited by how big the dictionary can be – little hands must be able to handle it...". I can only roll my eyes. How much bigger would the dictionary have been if they hadn't deleted some of those words? A page? Two, maybe, three? You'd need fifty pages before it made a difference to "little hands"-- which would work out to about three entries a page (there are 152 deleted words listed). This excuse is simply that-- an excuse.
Oh, also from that article of Roger Kimball's: apparently some American Muslims informed the Department of Homeland Security that while the word "progress" is acceptable, "liberty" is to be avoided. Why? Because it is a "buzzword for American hegemony".
Personally, I'm alright with liberty being a synonym for America.
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