Saturday, July 01, 2006

Descriptive Dictionary in Trouble

Ever since the Oxford English Dictionary was compiled around 100 years ago, most dictionaries worldwide have been descriptive. They RECORD what people mean by words, they do not stipulate what is "proper" usage.

My Macquarie Australian Dictionary, for instance, defines "poofter" as a "male homosexual" because that is what the word is used to mean in Australia. Most Australian homosexuals would however regard the word as offensive and it is indeed often used as a term of contempt in Australia.

In Spain, however, the descriptive approach is getting attacked. The latest official dictionary of Spanish includes a number of words that are sometimes used with an offensive meaning and it records what those offensive meanings are. All sorts of minorities are up in arms over that. Details here




The Unmentionable Antisemitism

We read:

"A Dutch professor accused the president of his university of suppressing free speech by cutting out parts of a talk on Muslim anti-Semitism...

Van der Horst was allowed to deliver the first half of the speech, which focused on Christian anti-Semitism."

Source

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