Oxford English Dictionary extends hunt for regional words around the world | Hacker News Reader

Oxford English Dictionary extends hunt for regional words around the world

theguardian.com

26 pointsgruseom13 comments

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I think they need to go through this: http://www.samosapedia.com/by_language/english

Great way to timepass btw.

Anyone interested in this might also like the Dictionary of American Regional English:

http://daredictionary.com/

(unfortunately, not free for full access)

The English language versus the German language is like data scientists versus actuaries. English had no quality control; the oxford still uses adverbs but ignores ye for plural second person, and they for third person singular, but who fucking cares? The German language remembers every exception, and, by the way, wegen was dativ before it was genitive, and is like solving simultaneous partial differential equatons to speak.

Lower regulation leads to more development and higher risk.

Let’s accept that trade-off and go intelligently forward.

Does anyone know where the OED draws the line on niche jargon and slang? There’s a lot of self-conscious neologism and silliness in in publications such as The New Hacker’s Dictionary and Urbandictionary, but also a lot of genuine words that have genuine meaning in niche communities.

It seems to avoid niche and profession specific coinages pretty well so they must be looking for candidates to spill over into more general usage.

I wonder if they're uniq -c everything lodged at the British Library each year.

They're descriptive rather than prescriptive so are constantly adapting to new usages, and spellings. Which probably means that it's only a matter of time before "loose" is an accepted spelling of "lose" rather than an entirely different meaning. :(

I was going to write something more cranky, and then I looked at your username and had a laugh. Irregardless of your perceptive on this, it is good to be self-conscience.

> Irregardless of your perceptive on this, it is good to be self-conscience

Well played! Perfectly acceptable internet usage. Especially in a world with auto-correct. :)

Yet somehow lose/loose grates a little when a they're/their or it's/its doesn't. Possibly as the mental pronunciation has already led me down a blind alley. Or possibly I have no idea why. I almost never make comment.

I tend to suspect that lose/loose, break/brake, etc. are often a case of the user not knowing the difference as they often appear consistently in a comment. Whereas, even though I know the difference between it's and its (for example), I still just make a mistake now and then because of mental pronunciation.

But I don't comment either although I notice and twinge a bit :-)

We have whoadie which means you're from the same ward (or any ward) eg. 7th Ward.

This is what they say: https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/our-story/creating-dictio...

"Before adding a word to one of our dictionaries we have to see evidence that it is widely used in print or online."

Which doesn't really answer the question but "widely used" tends to suggest something beyond technical jargon or niche slang.

Is "doh" still relevant today. 50 years from now?

Don't have a cow, man. It's going to stick around.

I submitted a regional racial slur: "prug". Is that acceptable?

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