Junior dictionary contents

November 2024 Forums General discussion Junior dictionary contents

Viewing 10 posts - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
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  • #253187
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    Another move by the digital craze against language.

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/13/oxford-junior-dictionary-replacement-natural-words?CMP=share_btn_url

    Which, sadly, many here will probably have no problem with.

    #253188
    zugzwang
    Participant

    Article’s from nine years ago? This is where we’re at now.

    #253189
    DJP
    Participant

    If you’re worried about this, the problem mentioned was really more about access to open space than the words changing in a dictionary, why not set up a nature group for kids instead of moaning about it on your computer.

    #253190
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Something more positive — and more up to date — from Generation Z:

    https://www.theryse.org/muinty-stroud-s-youth-assembly

    #253191
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    Because i’m a housebound invalid, DJP.

    #253192
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    ALB, Have you bothered to contact them about us, or just sent this here?

    #253193
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    It isn’t young people i am blaming. It’s what is being done to them by the producers of junior dictionaries and other internet-obsessed and newspeak-obsessed pundits.

    #253195
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Yes, they are known to our person on the ground there.

    #253196
    DJP
    Participant

    “It’s what is being done to them by the producers of junior dictionaries and other internet-obsessed and newspeak-obsessed pundits.”

    The function of a dictionary is descriptive not prescriptive. They are just tracking which words are commonly used and how they are being used.

    Lack of access to green spaces is not a new problem and not one that the makers of a children’s dictionary are in a position to solve.

    It’s too easy to get swept up by moral panics…

    I also see someone produced a child’s dictionary that is full of nature words, for those that want to use that version..

    #253197
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    Well that’s something. It is very sad, in fact, to think of children in concrete landscapes sat in front of computers and glued, already, to mobile phones and digital games.

    Those with deprived backgrounds, i understand, never enjoyed the happy childhood i did, so won’t have any affection for their childhood years. But i myself cannot imagine today’s childhoods, without books and toys galore, and things real, not virtual.

    Often i think i’m the only one here with William Morris’ passion for things: for that which was beautiful about the past, even if life was often sordid (it still is that!); for artefacts, artisanry, books, tapestries. Wasn’t his dream that everyone should enjoy such things and not just a few; not that they should disappear and be mere memories for a few sentimentalists, and that all of us should become lumpen automata?

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