Removal of Nature Words from Dictionary Causes Uproar

The Canadian Press – December 09, 2008

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• [>] B stands for blog, not beaver by JOSH WINGROVE

A B.C. environmental group is flabbergasted that the publisher of the Oxford Junior Dictionary has sent words like "beaver" and "dandelion" the way of the dodo bird. In the latest version of its dictionary for schoolchildren, Oxford University Press has cut nature terms such as heron, magpie, otter, acorn, clover, ivy, sycamore, willow and blackberry.

In their place, the university publishing house has substituted more modern terms, like the electronic Blackberry, blog, MP3 player, voicemail and broadband.
Canadian wildlife artist and conservationist Robert Bateman, whose Get to Know Program has been inspiring children to go outdoors and "get to know" their wild neighbours for more than a decade, said the decision is telling kids that nature just isn't that important.

"This is another nail in the coffin of human beings being acquainted with nature," Bateman said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"If you can't name things, how can you love them? And if you don't love them, then you're not going to care a hoot about protecting them or voting for issues that would protect them."

Environmentalists likely won't be the only ones stewing over the revisions.

Also gone from the text, which is available in Canada and throughout the English-speaking world, are Christian phrases like nun, monk, saint, disciple, psalm and christen.
No one from Oxford University Press was immediately available for a comment but a statement from the press said the junior dictionary, which is aimed at seven-year-olds, has fewer words than dictionaries for older readers.

It said the 6,000 words in the junior dictionary were selected based several criteria, including how often words would be used by young children and which are commonly misspelled. The university press wanted to keep the dictionary "accessibly-sized."

"This dictionary is not designed for children to use as they progress higher up the school years, and should be regarded as an introduction to language and the practice of using dictionaries," said the statement.

A separate edition aimed at children aged eight and older includes the words that have been removed from the junior dictionary, it said.

Vineeta Gupta, who heads children's dictionaries at Oxford University Press, said changes in the world are responsible for changes in the book.

Some religious words were removed because people don't go to church as often as before, Gupta told London's Daily Telegraph.

She had a similar rationale when asked about ditching words from the natural world.

"When you look back at older versions of dictionaries, there were lots of examples of flowers for instance. That was because many children lived in semi-rural environments and saw the seasons. Nowadays, the environment has changed," she said.

Bateman isn't buying it.

"I don't want to sound like an old you-know-what, but I have a feeling that quite a number of decisions are made by 20-somethings or 30-somethings," he said.
"There are a whole bunch of them out there who were raised on Saturday morning cartoons and video games and not out in nature."

Bateman plans to fire off a letter to the university press brass in protest.

"I find it frightening what is happening, that people are losing a connection with nature," he said.

"And the younger generation are losing a connection with nature much more than the older generation. That's why when it's a children's dictionary it's all the more horrifying."

Bateman questions how long some of the newly-added phrases will even be in use.

He said terms such as 8-track come into use and then, when the technology falls out of favour, disappear.

That's not likely to be the case with a word such as almond, which the Oxford University Press has also dropped.

But Oxford said dating was a concern discussed prior to revising the text.

"Children's dictionaries are generally revised every four years, so the criteria for inclusion of such words revolved around whether they might be around in four years time. Such discussions did take place about MP3 players, for instance," Gupta said.

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