Children’s dictionary dumps ‘nature’ words
To make way for modern tech terms such as BlackBerry, blog, voicemail and broadband, the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary has opted to drop terms pertaining to old nature. No longer can a child check this dictionary and learn more about the blackberry, dandelion, acorn, heron, otter, magpie, sycamore, or willow.
According to Vineeta Gupta, who heads children’s dictionaries at Oxford University Press, changes in the world are responsible for changes in the book. “When you look back at older versions of dictionaries, there were lots of examples of flowers for instance,” she said. “That was because many children lived in semi-rural environments and saw the seasons. Nowadays, the environment has changed.”
The 10,000 words and phrases in the junior dictionary were selected using several criteria, including how often words would be used by young children.
Words taken out:
Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade, 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.
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.
Via EcoChildPlay. Thanks Ivo.
I think I found a way to get this one word in again:
Pew! Reminds me of the shopping tree:
http://www.nextnature.net/?p=2590
Ok. Comparing the ins and outs, it looks all innocent and more and less peaceful word have been kicked out in the benefit of violence, eat, sleep, work, concrete, chipset and market rape.
Either it’s a reflection of the society, or an attempt to shape it, or both and thus solidify the state, it’s… sickening.
Hmm, they removed “dandelion” and added “celebrity”. Maybe in the next version “Britney Spears” and “Paris Hilton” will be in the dictionary. They might need to remove “sun” and “moon”, however.
i agree with mister stones
additionally the reason they removed these words is because they’re no longer in daily life, but you have to ask yourself; was it the words you were familiar with that you needed the definitions of?
why would you remove words that are too foreign from a dictionary?
also, who lets someone who still has the use for a children’s dictionary onto a chatroom without even prior explanation
and here’s an idea, instead of only teaching tehm the word democratic how about teaching them democracy and republic and oligarchy as well, you know, since its for education and not just brainwashing…
great way to teach your kids…
As long as children only read books written in the last 3 years, they’ll be fine. Keep them away from the classics and history books or they just might learn about things that last.
I’m pretty sure that there will be herons and duchesses long after the Blackberry and MP3s are outdated.
What poor financial judgement to cut off one end of the dictionary to make room for the new end and thus limit printing costs.
What a blow forl education to remove perfectly good words that may broaden a child’s understanding, words that may have been new once for another set of words that will go on to be used or not but reflect how language works.
this is absurd! there taking away childhood words. what next ?
ridiculous…better buy up all the current copies before they single handedly destroy our kids minds!
Fortunately kids have lots of places to look for the words they need, especially if they have an electronic gizmo at hand. A bigger problem is getting them outdoors to find acorns and butternuts, herons and kingfishers.
It seems that “ass” is taken out, it describes these thinkers well. Common sense is in, but they don’t have it, and creep is put in, which is another term for the people who thought this up. This is another example of how our society is going down the tubes.
What kind of world are we teaching our children to accept when we take out nature related words for words such as celebrity and chatroom? It doesn’t matter how often they are used – what matters is the importance of the words. Our children are suffering from too much exposure to computers, TV, and video games. Taking out nature related words only increases the gap between children and nature – at a time when they need nature as a special place where they can escape the adult world, explore, and feel free to be who they are. Nature promotes children to use all of thier senses – in a sense becoming AWAKE! It’s a shame the people that have influence over such decisions are not more AWAKE themselves…
Incredulous!! The removal of nature related words only deepens and widens the riff between contemporary man and nature. The words “interdependent” and “common sense” were added to the book and one might wonder why. In spite of the fact that we are biological beings in an active and ongoing interdependent relationship with nature and the natural resources that sustain our lives, it seems that the arbiters of knowledge would rather distract us from this simple truth. Common sense tells us that while our children may consume the fruits and smell the flowers within the realm of technology– the hardware, software , and information “grown” , it alone will certtainly not feed their bodies and thus sustain t heir lives. The contextual realm that called for the creation of words such as chatroom, blog, mp3 player , database, and bungee jumping does not mean that the environment has “changed” as Ms. Gupta suggests, rather it simply signifies only a very, very small piece of the human experience. Given the implications of the fact that t knowledge is socially distributed, those making decisions regarding the contents of this “book of knowledge” make compulsory that which is important to themselves. Making choices to include words based upon usage by children signifies the pervasiveness of information technology and its self-important , exclusive nature…word by word.
It doesn’t surprize me. Next it will be god ,jesus, church. All you hear today is about envirment and how animals may go extinct. Well looks like they have help now if we remove them maybe people won’t notice when they are gone. Maybe they could put the word fubar in there if you don’t know what fubar means look it up.
Ah, the land of the free!
You have the right to free speech as long as you speak English.
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best regards, Greg