In 2007, the editors of the Oxford Junior English Dictionary, convinced that their reference work “needed to reflect the consensus experience of modern-day childhood.”banned a group of old terms used less today describing the natural world. They inserted newer and supposedly more useful words describing the digital fields that young people in habit today.
Thus they say goodbye to “acorn”, but say hello to “attachment”. “Beech” and “bluebell” come out of the dictionary. While “blog” and “broadband” come into it. And they say farewell to “catkin” and “cowslip” because here come “celebrity” and “chat room”.
It's possible, of course, that those Oxford editors had a good reason for their vocabular cleansing. Perhaps they had read the Cambridge University study revealing that most young children can identify Pokémon(神奇宝贝)species far more easily than they can name real-life sparrows.
But is this simply another fight in the language war, an ongoing battle between people? Some people argue that a dictionary should model how language works best, while some people insist that it should capture how language works now.
In Britain, some citizens felt justified in fighting back against the decision of the Oxford editors. The protest of the thinning of the word herd almost immediately attracted more than200, 000 signatures.
Susie Dent, author of Modern Tribes：The Secret Languages of Britain, is doing everything in her power to guarantee “the old markers of time”. “Fortnight”(fourteen nights, or two weeks)is among her cherished favorites.
Thanks to them, I can now show off my knowledge that a “snollygoster” is a “shrewd person, especially a politician”.
