LONDON, ENGLAND, December 7, 2008: Words linked to British history and Christianity have been eased out from a leading UK dictionary for children. The Oxford University Press has taken out words like “aisle”, “bishop”, “chapel”, “empire” and “monarch” from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with modern words like “blog”, “broadband”, “voicemail” and “MP3 player.” Moreover, dozens of words related to the countryside have been culled.
The publisher claims the changes have been made to reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society. According to Vineeta Gupta, the Head of Children’s Dictionaries at Oxford University Press, “Nowadays, the environment has changed. We are much more multicultural. Our understanding of religion is in multi-culturalism, which is why some words would have been in 20 years ago but not now.”