Towards a Nascent Logodaedali…

George Hunt takes an appreciative look at currently available children’s dictionaries

I thought you ought to know that the Finnish word saippuakivikauppias, meaning a dealer in soapstone, holds the distinction of being the longest known palindromic word in any language. It should, I think, be welcomed into English dictionaries, to keep company with such delightfully sonorous curiosities as malemaroking, slubberdegullion, sastrugi, marl, numpty and aa. In the course of browsing through some 40-odd children’s dictionaries for this article, I sought these words in vain. Now, I don’t claim for one minute that such omissions are likely to lead to lexical poverty in the children who use these resources, but they do demonstrate the rather utilitarian approach to our magnificent wordhoard that has been adopted by the compilers. Opening a dictionary should be like the start of a serendipitous stroll through a bookshop. One may enter the premises with a narrow objective in mind, but seductive distractions and irrelevancies should beckon from every corner.

This is one of the very few complaints I have about the impressive range of dictionaries currently on the market for children. If the lexicon is somewhat lacking in richness and strangeness, this is compensated for by a wealth of diversity in formats, coverage, pictorial content, and strategies for definition, all of which represent laudable efforts by the publishers to cater for a variety of target audiences.

In evaluating this material, I’ve used the following criteria:

* Is the coverage for the intended age range comprehensive and contemporary?

* Are the definitions clear, unambiguous, innocent of circularity and supported by interesting verbal or pictorial illustrations?

* Does the dictionary have a preface explaining how it is to be used?

* Is such information as pronunciation, etymology, different word forms, related words, alternative spellings, usage and grammar provided?

* Is the book robust, physically attractive and comfortable to use?

My own judgements have been complemented by those of children from within the relevant age range and their teachers.

PICTURE WORD BOOKS

For the youngest children, both Collins and Usborne provide thematic picture word books, where heavy duty vocabulary clusters around teeming panoramas. Both the Collins First Word Book and Usborne’s First Thousand Words sustained the browsing of nursery children effectively and nutritiously, and teachers approved of their clarity and robustness. The latter presents more than three times as many words for an extra £2, and includes a useful appendix in which all of the words are set out in alphabetical order. Oxford’s Picture Word Book provides a serviceable bridge between these illustrated vocabulary books and dictionaries proper. Here, 500 words are alphabetically ordered and accompanied by a demonstrative phrase. Additional sections contain a ‘words we write a lot’ list, mathematical vocabulary, and thematic pages. This book is very comprehensive and excellent value for money.

FIRST DICTIONARIES

Chambers, Collins, Oxford and Usborne all produce volumes with the First Dictionary tag. Linguistically, there’s little to choose between them. All but one cover 1,500 words (Usborne contains 2,500) and all use full sentence definitions, and occasional example sentences, to demonstrate usage and enhance clarity. Inflectional variations accompanying head words provide additional help with spelling. Chambers was the clear favourite in this category with both teachers and children. Though it’s heavier to handle than the others, and lacks guide words at the top of its pages, it is superbly illustrated with pictures and photographs, the headwords are almost radiantly bold, and there are several full page expansions of key concepts (games, animals, the human body, etc.) which introduce subject specific terminology. It also has an informative preface, word play boxes, spelling tips and occasional explanations of word origins.

PRIMARY AND JUNIOR DICTIONARIES

The range of material available for the later primary age range is bewildering in its scope. Both Collins and Oxford publish Children’s, Primary and Junior dictionaries, though the age ranges they attach to these labels differ slightly. Each publisher also produces illustrated and pocket versions of some of these categories. In both series progression is marked by a greater number of words covered, diminishing degrees of flippancy in the illustrations and by layout features more typical of adult dictionaries. At the more sophisticated end of this range, the Oxford Primary School Dictionary has 25,000 entries, clear examples to provide a context of definitions, explicit notes on usage, and a pronunciation guide whose simplicity would be a good example for adult dictionaries.

Whilst the Oxford series sticks to traditional ‘definese’, the Collins dictionaries use whole sentence definitions throughout, many of them addressed to the reader. The children found this style a lot more sympathetic, though I was a little bothered by some curious omissions from this series. For example, jovial is provided, but not joy, and some crucial grammatical words like and, let and is are missing from the entire range; perhaps this reflects a view of dictionaries as aids to spelling rather than as models of the working language.

Pocket and Mini Dictionaries

On the whole, the children preferred pocket versions of dictionaries to heftier models, one child remarking of a rather weighty volume, that it was like handling a gravestone. Mini versions were even more popular, the compactness of the format seeming to appeal to the child’s love of smallness. The most popular of these was the Chambers Super-Mini, a miniaturised adult dictionary with a full range of information on usage, pronunciation and word origins. This bountiful little slab of a book is as rich as its own weight in vintage Stilton, but also as perishable in the hands of an enthusiast.

The favourite from the primary range was the Collins Pocket Primary because of its friendly size, playful illustrations and colourful and uncrowded layout. I liked the clear sign-posting and the lucid definese of this title, but had reservations about its over-simplified treatment of some words. For example, in its definition of right – ‘Your right hand is the hand that most people write with’ – it reduces one of the most complex and contentious words in the language to its most unproblematic manifestation.

Larger Format Illustrated Dictionaries

A category which provoked much interest with all age ranges was the larger format illustrated dictionary. Both Oxford and Dorling Kindersley produce Visual Dictionaries which are like advanced versions of the picture word books discussed earlier. The Oxford is the more austere of the two; it covers more themes than the DK, but lacks the latter’s visual abundance and wealth of peripheral information. The heavyweight title in this category goes to the Chambers Children’s Illustrated Dictionary, a hulking, lavishly ornamented tome which combines the functions of encyclopaedia and dictionary. It leans, however, more towards the former function and, though an excellent book for general browsing, has limited utility as an everyday source of information on spellings and meanings. I enjoyed the Usborne Illustrated Dictionary best in this category. This has a more compact format and, with 10,000 headwords, quite a comprehensive, up to date and politically aware coverage. Intricate labelled diagrams act as branching programmes to expand the range of vocabulary beyond that presented by the headwords. Its introduction is extemely helpful to the reader, and incorporates a concise and fascinating history of English.

DICTIONARIES FOR OLDER READERS

Finally, to the dictionaries designed for older readers. Here the honours are shared quite evenly between the Oxford and the Collins Shorter School Dictionaries. Though the Oxford has 40,000 head words in comparison to the Collins 20,000, both are well organised resources, and perform well against the criteria I’ve listed. The high school students who test drove them for me were unable to state a preference, but they appreciated the visual spaciousness of the layout, and the clarity of the definitions and usage notes.

These books provide comprehensive opportunities for developing knowledge about the drier aspects of English, but the gaps in their coverage demonstrate my earlier point that though great strides have been made in the design and accessibility of dictionaries for children and young people, the actual lexicography remains somewhat unadventurous.

The readers I spoke to while preparing this article regarded dictionaries as places where you could either look up the spelling of a known word, or seek the meaning of an unknown one. They were less familiar with the idea that a good dictionary should offer opportunities for idle browsing, or for developiong a sense of exhilaration at the vastness, diversity and sheer beauty of the language. This shortcoming is most evident in an almost complete absence of dialect, taboo and slang words from all of the dictionaries. The Durham children took quite a balanced view of this issue, arguing that they’d like to see local terms like croggy and backer in their dictionaries, but only if they were clearly demarcated as such. Of course, it would be impractical to include a large number of dialectal variants or informal terms in the confined space of a child’s dictionary, but a judicious smattering of such terms, properly sign-posted, in the body of the text (seesaw accompanied by teeter-totter, scarecrow by gally-bagger?) or in a specialised appendix, might help children to appreciate the paths that proliferate beyond the narrow highway of the standard.

(An intriguing little exception to this narrowness can be found on page 414 of the Collins Shorter School Dictionary, where the verb whirdle (adj. whirdlesome) is defined as ‘to shake something violently’ with the entertaining example sentence ‘the musician lost his temper and whirdled his banjo at the band’. I can’t find this gem in either Chambers or the OED, and suspect it might be a playful coinage. I certainly hope so!)

A very cautious attitude is taken by all the dictionaries towards contemporary vernacular. While words like rap, which are becoming part of the furniture, are included in most of the older age range material, there’s no suggestions anywhere that wicked could mean anything other than evil or mischievous. The archaic and the merely fusty are also given short shrift. The taunting fragrance of aromatic old dust that haunts the best bookshops is absent, and none of the appendices find room for a list of proverbs, sayings or classical tags (though the Oxford School Dictionary does have a helpful list of foreign words and phrases used in English).

Another concern is the degree to which the dictionaries represent how contemporary issues are reflected in lexis. Words like Aids, joyride and privatise are covered in the upper age range dictionaries, but only the Usborne Illustrated Dictionary has ethnic cleansing (perhaps reflecting the other dictionaries’ tendency to focus on single words) and only the advanced Oxford Study Dictionary has quango. None of the dictionaries mention that pernicious and ubiquitous euphemism, downsizing.

Perhaps the lexicographers could select example sentences more imaginatively to convey the sense that words are not neutral tokens, but objects loaded with constantly changing historical and emotional connotations. In a recent edition of Cambridge Language Reference News (reprinted in Reading Today, July 1996),Francisco Gomes de Matos calls for lexicographers to incorporate ‘humanising examples’ into their dictionaries, citing with approval the Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary’s use of the sentence ‘in nuclear war there are no winners’ in entries for both nuclear and war. The nearest similar examples I could find in my trawl was the sentence that the Oxford Junior Dictionary uses in the entry for increase – ‘the number of children in my class has increased from thirty to thirty-two this year’ and the Collins Shorter School Dictionary’s example for never – ‘I never watch situation comedies. They stunt your growth.’

With research into language change thriving, and the lexicographers amassing in electronic corpora a fabulous wealth of examples of language in use, it should be possible to match the visual beauty of these dictionaries with a correspending measure of lingustic sumptuousness. Our nascent logodaedali deserve nothing less.

PICTURE WORD BOOKS

Collins First Word Book, 0 00 197005 4, £5.99

First Thousand Words, Usborne, 0 7460 2303 0, £7.99; 0 7460 2302 2, £4.99 pbk

Picture Word Book, Oxford, 0 19 910299 6, £7.99; 0 19 910346 1, £3.99 pbk

FIRST DICTIONARIES

First Dictionary, Chambers, 0 550 10662 6, £9.99

First Dictionary, Collins, 0 00 197001 1, £7.99

First Dictionary, Oxford, 0 19 910236 8, £7.99; 0 19 910275 9, £4.99 pbk

First Dictionary, Usborne, 0 7460 2348 0, £12.99; 0 7460 2347 2, £9.99 pbk

PRIMARY AND JUNIOR DICTIONARIES

Oxford Primary School Dictionary, 0 19 910335 6, £6.99

Pocket and Mini Dictionaries

Chambers Super-Mini Dictionary, 0 550 10712 6, £2.99 pbk

Collins Pocket Primary Dictionary, 0 00 196475 5, £3.99

Larger Format Illustrated Dictionaries

Chambers Children’s Illustrated Dictionary, 0 550 10651 0, £19.99

Usborne Illustrated Dictionary, 0 7460 1334 5, £10.99; 0 7460 1333 7, £8.99 pbk; 0 7460 2129 1, £13.99 luxury edition

DICTIONARIES FOR OLDER READERS

Oxford Shorter School Dictionary, 0 19 910377 1, £8.99

Collins School Dictionary, 0 00 196480 1, £8.99

Collins Shorter School Dictionary, 0 00 196479 8, £5.99

GENERAL

Oxford School Dictionary, 0 19 910377 1, £8.99

Oxford Study Dictionary, 0 19 910312 7, £5.99 pbk

Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary, 0 00 375029 9, £18.00; 0 00 370941 8, £12.50 pbk

Oxford Junior Dictionary, 0 19 910304 6, £5.50

(Thanks are due to the children and staff of Blagdon Nursery and Alfred Sutton School in Reading, and of Butterknowle Primary School in County Durham.)