Reducing children's vocabulary (or just changing it)?

chrispenycate

chrispenycate

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This has been pushed on some education sites, and my sister pointed it out to me:-
http://io9.com/removal-of-nature-words-from-childrens-dictionary-spark-1679420156

Since I believe in not dumbing down - for anyone - perhaps I should stick to cyberpunk when writing children's stories. All right, 'invertebrate' is unlikely to upset me much, and 'conkers' have probably been banned by the health and safety executive, but acorns and goldfish are quite likely to appear.
 
Inevitably, I thought of the 11th edition of the Newspeak dictionary. "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words".
 
I'm fairly sure my five year old knows all those (except probably "minnow")... and he doesn't use a dictionary yet. So, from a sample of one, I conclude British childhood is safe and we can all stop panicking.
 
Surely most children now will just Google it all anyway. I have to admit that I've totally moved over to the use of Google and having 'Definition of ....' typed in and ready, instead of picking up my heavy old dictionary when I'm writing.

@Phyrebrat I'm impressed an 11 year old can open up an immersion boiler to see what nasties are there. I haven't got a clue how to get inside mine. :)
 
True; I have to check my kids' coursework for Wiki crap.

She doesn't get in the boiler!!! It conks out and she's there when the plumber works on it. The other thing is poached fish all go white and the skin falls off so now I need to really rethink that scene :p

Bloody writing.

pH
 
Phyrebrat said:
True; I have to check my kids' coursework for Wiki crap.

She doesn't get in the boiler!!! It conks out and she's there when the plumber works on it. The other thing is poached fish all go white and the skin falls off so now I need to really rethink that scene :p

Bloody writing.

pH
Click to expand...

:ROFLMAO::p

My granddad once had an earthworm come out of the cold water tap. I don't think that helps that scene, but it did really happen.
 
Kerrybuchanan said:
New Zealand Flatworms appear in our toilet bowl
Location:
Ballynahinch, County Down
Click to expand...
Eh?
Also why to people think things swimming in well water make it better to drink?

Wasn't an outbreak of something horrid in London traced to a hand pump that turned out to have a dead eel in it? (Typhoid or Cholera, the start of realising the importance of clean water).

I confess I use Google just for spelling correction. My spelling checkers sometimes are flummoxed. As as kid I often wasn't sure where to start in the dictionary to find how to spell a word. If you read a lot you learn a surprising number of meanings by context. I've thus rarely used a dictionary for meanings. The built in one in Kindle / Kobo hardware is handy, though only the US English one works on my Kindle DXG, which means I can select the GB one if I'm proof reading / adding notes as then I don't get into definitions by accident but straight to note taking clicking on a word.
 
New Zealand Flatworms appear in our toilet bowl
Location:
Ballynahinch, County Down

They were strong swimmers? :giggle:

Actually, it was when we lived in our old house, but since that was only 8 miles away, they must still have been pretty epic endurance swimmers. Apparently they eat earthworms, so VB's Grandad's earthworm was probably hiding out in the water pipe at the time. Maybe he was part of the Earthworm Resistance, or the Judean Earthworm's Front, or the Earthworm's Front of Judea -- or something.
 
Kerrybuchanan said:
We've had both frogs and New Zealand Flatworms appear in our toilet bowl
Click to expand...

I've stayed in houses with resident green tree frogs in the toilet, which was disconcerting, and a strong incentive to turn on the light during midnight "pit stops". I don't know how I'd have reacted to this:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-15/snakes-in-loos-search-for-water-in-townsville-houses/6778608

On the topic of children's dictionaries, I can remember my mother telling me to use the dictionary whenever I asked the meaning of a word (at 7 or 8 years old); I decided that it was easier to work out the meaning from the context. That probably sharpened my wits, but my interpretation of words was occasionally a bit odd.
 
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