Erin McKean is a lexicographer. She gets to say fun words, but most people don't have a fun feeling for dictionaries. Deciding what words are good or bad is not fun, or easy. Because of this she doesn't want to do them. She'd rather be a "fisherman", as in she'd like to throw her line into the English Language and catch some big ones, or new words. Unfortunately, she has to be a police officer, or traffic cop, for words and doesn't have time to go fishing for new words.Dictionaries haven't changed since conception. Yes, now we have computers, but computers just speed up the process of compiling dictionaries they don't change it. McKean refers to
dictionaries as steam punk in the way design hasn't changed, an electric velocipede. Even online dictionaries aren't that different from print dictionaries, they still simply list words. All that's changed is the search process, and how we find other words in the dictionary.Essentially McKean says dictionaries are a "ham-butt problem", what she means by this is it's not that there's good and bad words, there's just not enough room for all of them. When people find a word not in the dictionary they think it's a bad word, but really the dictionaries that are bad.
McKean says paper are the enemies of words. Not that paper dictionaries are going to disappear, but it won't be the dominant form of dictionary.
What if scientists could only study cute animals? Well, we wouldn't know much of anything. Same thing with words, if we only study the so-called "good" words then we're missing out.
McKean says: "Words are the tools that we use for the expression of our thoughts."
There is not question of what is a word and what isn't. Love makes words real, being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction. Think of the English language as a mobile, if you touch it or change it it's not broken, it's just in a different position. It's still pretty and nice.
If your goal is not to direct words, but to count them then you need more people to help complete the task. There are un-dictionary words in almost all books, newspapers, and magazines, but they're still words. Some words even have more meanings that aren't in dictionaries. "Set" can have 33 different meanings. One is miscellaneous technical senses. What McKean is telling the listener is that lexicography is not rocket science, anyone can help compile words. Even if it were, rocket science is being done by dedicated amateurs, so you don't need to be a lexicographer to help find words that aren't in dictionaries.
The Internet is great for collecting words and is essentially made up of "words and enthusiasm." So is lexicography but, unfortunately, words online often don't have context.
We could make the dictionary be the whole language. If we can put in all th words we can leave the aesthetic decisions to the writers and the speakers. Lexicographers can go looking for words, not policing them.
You only have one line above the picture, just to let you know.
ReplyDelete"Because of this she doesn't want to do them." - The verb tense in this sentence does not agree with the sentence before it and it is a fragment. Could have been combined with the sentence before it.
"Yes, now we have computers, but computers just speed up the process of compiling dictionaries they don't change it." - There should be a comma between "dictionaries" and "they."
"McKean refers to dictionaries as steam punk in the way design hasn't changed, an electric velocipede." - You should brackets around "steam punk" so we know it's McKean's idea. Also, this sentence doesn't really flow. What does the electric velocipede have to do with anything? Maybe "like and electric velocipede?"
"Essentially McKean says dictionaries are a "ham-butt problem", what she means..." - You should probably put a period between "ham-butt problem" and "what" to shorten this sentence a bit.
"When people find a word not in the dictionary they think it's a bad word, but really the dictionaries that are bad." - Should be "but really IT'S the..."
Maybe put un-dictionary in quotations so that we, again, know that it's McKean's idea.
"If we put in all thE..." - You are missing the "e" on "the."
There were mostly just mistakes that were probably there as the exercise, originally, was to free write. I like your quotes and you got a lot of what McKean was trying to say.