Robert Bateman prefers "Castor canadensis," but the artist and self-admitted "old fogey" is willing to accept "beaver."
A conservationist, Mr. Bateman, 78, built a career painting a host of Canadian wildlife. Now, times have changed. He can only hope children are able to identify one of his beloved bucktoothed pieces of Canadiana as readily as an iPod.
It all might seem a losing battle. But Mr. Bateman was nevertheless on his soapbox this week after revelations that the Oxford Junior Dictionary has replaced "beaver" — and friends such as the "heron," "porcupine," and "kingfisher" — in its pages with new, plugged-in alternatives.
For instance, the juicy "blackberry" is out. But the electronic "blog" is in, joined by "MP3 player," "broadband" and "biodegradable," in the 10,000-entry edition aimed at children aged 7 and up.
"It's another nail in the coffin of a whole generation we seem to be training to not go outdoors, and to lose touch with nature," Mr. Bateman said. "Human beings have been outdoors all the entirety of humanity… I'm told, to my horror, that this doesn't happen any more."
The current edition of the junior dictionary, published in 2007, is sold in Canada and a number of English-speaking countries. But its additions and omissions weren't caught until a report in London's Sunday Telegraph. The newspaper counted more than 150 words that were dropped for the current edition. Most are flora or fauna, including familiar examples such as "lobster," "fern," "sycamore" and "dandelion."
The other casualties are far-ranging. Children enamoured of fantasy stories won't find "dwarf," "elf" or "goblin." Holiday terms such as "carol," "holly," and "mistletoe" were cut. And about two-dozen religious words — such as "bishop," "nun," and "devil" — fell from Oxford Junior's graces.
Other additions included "celebrity," "tolerant," "dyslexic" and "euro."
Oxford University Press, which publishes the edition, said the book can only be so big, because it has to fit in the hands of a seven-year-old and be accessible to new readers. When words are added, others must be removed.
"We are limited by how big the dictionary can be," Vineeta Gupta, who heads children's dictionaries at OUP, told the Telegraph. "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."
That doesn't console Mr. Bateman, who understood the "MP3 player" entry to include "all these various iPod things."
"Name me the kid that doesn't know what an iPod is, please. Do they really need that in the dictionary?" he said. "They can Google it."
Mr. Bateman, who runs a non-profit organization that encourages children to spend time outdoors, said dictionaries should shun such "ephemeral" electronics and teach awareness of biodiversity.
"It's catering to the commercialization and taking kids away from nature," he said. "These things that they're adding to the dictionary will be famous for 15 minutes or 15 years, but kingfishers and herons and beavers and almonds, I think, will be around 15,000 years, or 1,500 years anyhow."
Canadian environmentalism icon David Suzuki echoed Mr. Bateman's dismay, when told last night of the word replacements.
"I'm afraid this is totally mystifying to me," he wrote in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail.
Ms. Gupta told the Telegraph that trials were conducted in schools and words were added that reflected what children were learning. It was those trials that left Mr. Bateman's preferences out of the junior dictionary's pages.
"[OUP would] say, 'we've gotta get with it,'" Mr. Bateman said. "I guess I've been an old fogey since I was a teenager, because I was always interested in these things … I feel sorry for the beaver."
With a report from The Canadian Press
