(CNN) — Adding a word to the dictionary has long been a sign of mainstream legitimacy. And in the latest batch added to Dictionary.com, the online dictionary has included multiple African American Vernacular English words such as “finna” and “chile,” among other words and phrases related to race and identity.
The latest update includes 450 brand-new entries, 7,600 updated entries, and 94 new definitions on existing entries — with a focus on race and identity, and Covid-19’s effect on culture.
As society continues to reckon with racism, language is affected, said John Kelly, managing editor at Dictionary.com, in a statement on Thursday.
“We have added such terms as BIPOC, Critical Race Theory, and overpolice, which have risen to the top of the national discourse on social justice,” Kelly said. “Another significant decision was to remove the noun slave when referring to people, instead using the adjective enslaved or referring to the institution of slavery. This is part of our ongoing efforts to ensure we represent people on Dictionary.com with due dignity and humanity.”
The update also includes edits like capitalizing Indigenous when referring to the earliest known inhabitants of a region or their descendants.
The website also added terms relating to society in Covid-19, like doomscrolling and an entry for the video-calling tool, Zoom.
Here are just some of the words and definitions added to the website, reflecting the ways in which the US has changed in the last year.
Race and identity terms
AAL – An acronym for African American Language.
Antiracism – A belief that rejects “supremacy of one racial group over another and promotes racial equality in society.”
BIPOC – An acronym for Black, Indigenous and People of Color.
Chile – “A phonetic spelling of child, representing dialectal speech of the Southern United States or African American Vernacular English.”
Critical Race Theory – “A conceptual framework that considers the impact of historical laws and social structures on the present-day perpetuation of racial inequality.”
Finna – “A phonetic spelling representing the African American Vernacular English variant of fixing to, a phrase commonly used in Southern U.S. dialects to mark the immediate future while indicating preparation or planning already in progress.”
Reparation – “Monetary or other compensation payable by a country to an individual for a historical wrong.”
Structural racism – Also called institutional racism or systemic racism, this refers to a policy or system of government that is rooted in racism, the website says.
Covid-19 and culture terms
Doomscrolling – “The practice of obsessively checking online news for updates, especially on social media feeds, with the expectation that the news will be bad.”
Sourdough – “Fermented dough retained from one baking and used as leaven, rather than fresh yeast, to start the next.”
Superspreader – “A person who spreads a contagious disease more easily and widely than the average infected person.”
Telework – “To work at home or from another remote location.”
Unmute – “To turn on (a microphone, a speaker, or audio), especially after it has been temporarily turned off or when muted sound is the default.”
Zoom – “The brand name of a software application and online service that enables voice and video phone calls over the internet.”
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Dictionary.com’s finna step into a new world of racial diversity.
The site recently updated its database with words from African American Vernacular English and other words and phrases involving race and identity.
With 450 brand new entries and 7,600 updated entries, the website is moving with the changing world that the pandemic and society’s racial reckoning ushered forth.
“This is part of our ongoing efforts to ensure we represent people on Dictionary.com with due dignity and humanity,” Dictionary.com wrote in a statement.
In addition to capitalizing the “I” in “Indigenous and removing the noun “slave” from dozens of entries, they’ve also included terms like “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous people of color) and “AAL” (African American Language)
And chile, we are here for it.
Here are a few of the words we’re happy to see added to Dictionary.com (definitions via Dictionary.com).
Finna [ fin-uh ]
a phonetic spelling representing the African American Vernacular English variant of fixing to, a phrase commonly used in Southern U.S. dialects to mark the immediate future while indicating preparation or planning already in progress:
Oh, no, she finna break his heart!
Chile [ chahyl ]
a phonetic spelling of child, representing dialectal speech of the Southern United States or African American Vernacular English:
Oh, chile, you do not want to test me!
Antiracism [ an-tee-rey-siz-uhm, an-tahy‐ ]
a belief or doctrine that rejects the supremacy of one racial group over another and promotes racial equality in society.
Most people are proud if they are not racist, but antiracism establishes a higher bar—what are you doing to dismantle racism?
Critical Race Theory [ krit-i-kuhl reys-thee-uh-ree, theer-ee ]
a conceptual framework that considers the impact of historical laws and social structures on the present-day perpetuation of racial inequality: first used in legal analyses, and now applied in education, communication studies, and sociology.
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Dictionary.com’s finna step into a new world of racial diversity.
The site recently updated its database with words from African American Vernacular English and other words and phrases involving race and identity.
With 450 brand new entries and 7,600 updated entries, the website is moving with the changing world that the pandemic and society’s racial reckoning ushered forth.
“This is part of our ongoing efforts to ensure we represent people on Dictionary.com with due dignity and humanity,” Dictionary.com wrote in a statement.
In addition to capitalizing the “I” in “Indigenous and removing the noun “slave” from dozens of entries, they’ve also included terms like “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous people of color) and “AAL” (African American Language)
And chile, we are here for it.
Here are a few of the words we’re happy to see added to Dictionary.com (definitions via Dictionary.com).
Finna [ fin-uh ]
a phonetic spelling representing the African American Vernacular English variant of fixing to, a phrase commonly used in Southern U.S. dialects to mark the immediate future while indicating preparation or planning already in progress:
Oh, no, she finna break his heart!
Chile [ chahyl ]
a phonetic spelling of child, representing dialectal speech of the Southern United States or African American Vernacular English:
Oh, chile, you do not want to test me!
Antiracism [ an-tee-rey-siz-uhm, an-tahy‐ ]
a belief or doctrine that rejects the supremacy of one racial group over another and promotes racial equality in society.
Most people are proud if they are not racist, but antiracism establishes a higher bar—what are you doing to dismantle racism?
Critical Race Theory [ krit-i-kuhl reys-thee-uh-ree, theer-ee ]
a conceptual framework that considers the impact of historical laws and social structures on the present-day perpetuation of racial inequality: first used in legal analyses, and now applied in education, communication studies, and sociology.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — On a cold January morning, Lilian Montoya drove from her house to a Covid-19 testing center in Anchorage, Alaska. Her husband had tested positive for the disease a couple of days before, as had her daughter and son. Since she was not feeling well, she registered with the testing center and had her nose swabbed.
A few days later, she received a negative result. Still feeling ill and certain that the negative result was false, Montoya repeated the test the following day. It yielded the same result. Only after a third test did the result square with her flu-like symptoms.
Montoya is a Mexican immigrant, and Spanish is her native language. But in none of her visits to the testing center was she offered assistance in Spanish. The registration forms she filled out were written in English, as were the emails bearing her results.
While Montoya is also fluent in English, not all of the more than 27,000 Latinos living in Anchorage have the same language skills.
Anchorage residents have adapted a recreational vehicle as a Covid-19 testing center. (Lauren Horn)
Latinos have a longer history in states other than Alaska, sometimes longer by centuries. The earliest immigration record for a Mexican person in Alaska dates to the 1910s, according to Sara Komarniski, a postdoctoral fellow in history at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. However, the largest waves of immigrants in Alaska arrived in the aftermath of the 1964 earthquake. With entire cities to rebuild, Alaska needed construction workers, and Latinos answered the call.
The discovery of oil in the North Slope triggered another surge in the 1970s. During the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, Hispanic workers joined the burgeoning restaurant and hospitality industries. Eventually, they sent for their spouses, children and parents. With few exceptions, the older generation grew up speaking only Spanish and almost none was fluent in English.
Spanish is ubiquitous in some states, but not in Alaska, where only 3.5 percent speak it at home. More than a quarter of them speak English “less than very well,” according to the Statistical Atlas, based on information from the U.S. Census.
Many immigrants may not know of services available to bridge the language gap.
Lack of interpreters
“Many people believe that if they ask for a translator, they will be billed for it. But they have the right to request an interpreter,” said Montoya, who is part of the Peer Leader Navigator program. Formed by trained Anchorage residents who speak foreign languages, the program helps “limited English Proficient Communities access health information and resources,” according to the Municipality of Anchorage website.
The lack of an interpreter can be consequential. Montoya remembers the case of a man whose house was foreclosed on because he did not understand a document. “I asked him, ‘if you did not understand the letter, why didn’t you ask for help?’”
Even when people do request translators, some agencies may not provide them. “Clients have told me that they call 211 and ask for Spanish service, and they are told that the agency doesn’t have interpreters,” said Montoya.
The 211 service helps connect Alaskans with “emergency food and shelter, educational opportunities, alcohol and drug treatment programs, senior services and childcare,” among other resources, according to its website, which is entirely in English.
When asked if the agency provides accessible service for non-English speakers, Sue Brogan, 211’s media representative, said that clients can access the webpage using Google Translate, and that the agency is working on a multilingual introductory phone menu.
But the problem goes beyond language, said Marisol Vargas, another Peer Leader Navigator. Originally from Mexico, Vargas said that one issue leads to another when there is a lack of language access.
Recently, a Hispanic family contacted the Peer Leader Navigator program because they could not afford to pay their electric bill. They could not heat the house, and their children could not attend online classes. Looking for a free Wi-Fi connection, the children sat outside the school with their computers. But it rained, and the computers were damaged.
With 107 registered languages, Anchorage is one of the most diverse cities in the United States. Peer Leader Navigators help community members with limited English access resources. (Marisol Vargas)
Alaska law forbids gas and electric utilities to stop service due to delayed payments for customers who are over 65, seriously ill, disabled, or who enter into a payment plan.
But, Vargas said, new arrivals might not know that help is available. Not understanding English complicates the problem.
Peer Leader Navigators are helping people to apply for Covid-19 relief funds and vaccines. Vargas said that though the vaccine application is in Spanish, “the translation is not correct. I believe it is a Google translation … The Clear button is translated as ‘Clara,’” which in Spanish means “white,” “egg white” or “bright.” But not “erase” or “delete.”
Vargas acknowledges that there is good faith on the part of the municipality, but she believes that the problem remains.
“Rough road” to language access in Anchorage
Anchorage has traveled “a rough and slow road regarding language access,” said attorney Mara Kimmel, who chairs the board of directors for Welcoming America, a national organization working to build communities that are more inclusive of immigrants and refugees.
“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was really the first time that people paid attention to language access as a civil right,” said Kimmel. She said that “people have the right to speak in their own language and to access political and governmental services in their own language.”
Kimmel also chairs the Alaska Institute for Justice’s board of directors. Since 2007, the organization’s Language Interpreter Center has been fighting for language access in Alaska.
At its inception, the Language Interpreter Center “went on a pretty big education campaign … to let people know that if you receive federal funds as an agency, whether you are part of the government or a nonprofit organization, you have to provide linguistically accessible services,” Kimmel said.
Kimmel understands that meeting the requirement can be a challenge.
“We speak over a hundred languages in Anchorage, and it would be impossible to provide written materials or even interpreters on each of those languages all of the time,” she said. “You just have to provide the means for people who are limited in their English proficiency to be able to get basic services.”
The Anchorage School District reports that, after English, Spanish is the language most spoken at school, followed by Hmong, Samoan, Tagalog and Korean. (Marisol Vargas)
To meet that requirement, government agencies and nonprofit organizations make flyers or include information in foreign languages on their websites. The Anchorage Municipality, for example, has Covid-19 information in 19 languages, including American Sign Language.
Providence Alaska Medical Center, the state’s largest hospital, offers both telephonic and video interpretation services at no cost to patients. “This includes translators who will call to update loved ones, who might also be non-English speakers,” said Mikal Canfield, the facility’s senior manager of external communication.
But the stories related by Montoya and Vargas illustrate how those resources do not always reach the communities they are meant to serve.
“It is important for the government and these organizations to educate themselves,” said Kimmel, “because these are basic civil rights issues, just as is the right to be free from any other form from discrimination.”
The problem, from her perspective, is “that even if we have civil rights laws on the books, we still have a lot of racism and animosity in our country. And [lack of] language [access] is a piece of that.”
(Edited by Judith Isacoff and Kristen Butler)
The post Hispanics In Alaska Lost In Translation appeared first on Zenger News.
OAKLAND, Calif., March, 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Dictionary.com today announced its latest addition of new words, which reflects the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on language and hits on a variety of additional themes relating to race, social justice, identity, and culture. The leading online dictionary has updated 7,600 entries, including 450 new entries and 94 new definitions in existing entries. The update continues its mission of not only documenting the ever-evolving English language, but also using words as an opportunity for discovery and education. Dictionary.com's team of lexicographers is continuously updating entries to ensure they are useful and relevant to its audience.
"2021, so far, is still so much about the events of 2020—and this is true for our work as a dictionary," said John Kelly, Managing Editor at Dictionary.com. "We continue to keep up with the many ways the pandemic has transformed our language. This includes, for instance, usage notes on capitalizing and spelling COVID-19, a term only added to the dictionary a year ago. This also includes an entry for the name of an application that, for so many of us, became synonymous with life during COVID-19: Zoom."
"Our update also reflects how our society is reckoning with racism, including in language," Kelly continued. "We have added such terms as BIPOC, Critical Race Theory, and overpolice, which have risen to the top of the national discourse on social justice. Another significant decision was to remove the noun slave when referring to people, instead using the adjective enslaved or referring to the institution of slavery. This is part of our ongoing efforts to ensure we represent people on Dictionary.com with due dignity and humanity."
Race and Identity at the Forefront
Race, social justice, and identity remain prominent themes in Dictionary.com's additions, including BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), as well as long-established AAL (African American Language) forms like finna and chile. More than ever before, the Black Lives Matter movement spurred an ongoing reckoning with how marginalized groups are treated in the U.S., with related additions such as overpolice, racialization, disenfranchisement and Critical Race Theory(CRT).
Additionally, the update includes capitalizing Indigenous when referring to a people who are the original, earliest known inhabitants of a region, or are their descendants. Dictionary.com also revised dozens of entries to eliminate the noun slave, replacing it with adjective enslaved or referencing the institution of slavery itself, in biographical entries, like those for Harriet Tubman, and in related entries like plantation or underground railroad.
COVID and Culture
COVID-19 also continues to drive significant language change, showing both how instantly and enduringly current events can impact the lexicon. From new ways to learn and work (blended learning, hybrid learning, telework) to suddenly prominent technical terms (flatten the curve, superspreader) and renewed discussions about UBI (universal basic income), it's evident that the impacts of the pandemic are lasting and far-reaching.
Doomscrolling through seemingly endless negative news may be detrimental to one's sleep hygiene, or it may lead to an encounter with sponcon, short for sponsored content, or a deepfake, an image or video that's been manipulated by artificial intelligence. And many parents have lost track of how many times they've told their children to use an indoor voice.
These added definitions embiggen the dictionary's lexicon, as we can say thanks to The Simpsons. And Dictionary.com is finally giving justice to Joey Tribbiani fans everywhere, adding an official entry to the word supposably, which is a perfectly cromulent word.
It's Not All Bad News, because Dogs…
In the midst of a tumultuous year, it's no surprise that people are turning to pets for support and companionship. As pet adoptions and sales increased, so did entries for dog breeds. Dictionary.com has added entries that run the gamut from designer dogs, such as Bernedoodle, cavachon, goldendoodle, Labradoodle, Maltipoo, Morkie, Pomsky, puggle, schnoodle, and Yorkiepoo, to poodles of all sizes: miniature, toy, and standard.
Words You've Never Heard
Many people have used stay-at-home orders to pick up new hobbies and learn new skills. Those hoping to expand their vocabulary can look no further than this latest update, highlighting additions and revisions of terms to the site that may be unfamiliar to many:
adroitly: with expert or dexterous use of the hands or body; nimbly
eukaryotic: of, relating to, or characteristic of a eukaryote, an organism whose basic structural unit is a cell containing specialized organelles and a membrane-bound nucleus
jingoistic: militantly nationalistic or chauvinistic
paroxysmal: sudden and uncontrolled
phenomenological: of, relating to, or based on observed or observable facts
pleiotropic: responsible for or affecting more than one phenotypic characteristic
pugilistic: relating to or involving fighting with the fists, especially professional boxing
reification: the act of treating something abstract, such as an idea, relation, system, quality, etc., as if it were a concrete object
For those that want to continue broadening their language learning and more, Dictionary.com has an ever-growing number of educational resources, including Thesaurus.com's Grammar Coach™, My Word List, and Dictionary.com Academy Tutors™.
"The Dictionary.com team is constantly updating our dictionary, thesaurus, and tools to make sure our users can always find the words they need for their lives," said Jennifer Steeves-Kiss, CEO of Dictionary.com. "We're more than a dictionary. Our goal is to open the door to learning. This is powered by our passion for words and grounded in our expertise in language. Our team is dedicated to providing delightful educational experiences for a fast-changing world, from getting personalized help in school with our online tutoring to perfecting writing on the job with our grammar tools and resources."
For more insight, visit https://ift.tt/38P1jfo.
About Dictionary.com
Dictionary.com is the world's leading online source for definitions, word origins, and a whole lot more. With virtual tutoring driven by Dictionary.com Academy Tutors™ and definitions that power Amazon's Alexa, Dictionary.com opens the door to learning for millions of people.
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Thesaurus.com powers millions of writers every day with the world's largest and most trusted lists of synonyms and antonyms, plus expert grammar advice. Whether they're looking for the perfect word or utilizing Grammar Coach™ for help writing that essay, email, or school paper, writers trust Thesaurus.com to help them communicate.
“To write yet another translation of the New Testament is probably something of a foolish venture,” wrote David Bentley Hart in 2017 as he set out to do that very thing. “No matter what one produces – recklessly liberal, timidly conservative, or something poised equilibriously in between – it will provoke consternation (and probably indignation) in countless breasts.”
His translation was quite lovely and very well annotated (and gets extra points just for that “equilibriously” alone), but he was undoubtedly correct: translating the Gospels is a difficult proposition. One of our greatest living translators, Sarah Ruden, takes on that same proposition in her latest work, a new English-language edition of the Gospels translated from the authoritative Nestle-Aland edition of the Koine Greek in which they were written.
The ordinary people of those Gospels, including Jesus, spoke Aramaic, not Greek. “Nearly all the words attributed to them,” Ruden points out, “are thus in a language they may never have voluntarily uttered, belonging to a cosmopolitan civilization they may well have despised.”
It’s one of the many layers that any translator needs to peel away in order to get at the Gospels. “The heart,” Ruden writes, “and the trick, of any ancient literary work is the nexus of content and style.” But the core of her task, she admits, is unachievable. “In general, I have had to be more blunt and literal than I would have liked,” Ruden writes. “Various concessions to modern accessibility were of course essential.”
Readers of this new translation will search long and hard for those various concessions to accessibility. What they’ll mostly find are tough peach pits of pedantry like “Kaisar” for Caesar, “Babulōn” for Babylon, “Galilaia” for Galilee, and, of course, “Iēsous” for Jesus. Ruden’s rhetoric throughout is sharp and bright, as compulsively readable as she contends the originals were written to be. But this decision to swap the familiar nomenclature of 10 centuries for halting tongue-twisters is both the most noticeable of Ruden’s rare missteps in this project.
Her thinking about the Gospels as works of literature is electrifying, and it’s often reflected in her translation choices. “The Gospels are not about Jesus; they are Jesus,” she contends. “In the Gospels’ content, the contrast is even sharper. In these new works, there is really only one figure, and only one voice,” she goes on. “In the Gospels, no one is essential but Jesus.” This kind of bright pedagogy has been at the heart of all Ruden’s excellent translations, including her “Aeneid” and her bracing version of St. Augustine’s “Confessions.”
But ultimately, that nexus of content and style is the most important acid test of any translation, and many of Ruden’s choices will strike readers as decidedly odd. Take the moment in Luke 4:33 when Jesus – or rather, Iēsous – casts a demon out of a man: “And in the synagogue was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon in him, and he screamed in a very loud noise, ‘No! What’s your business with us, Iēsous the Nazarēnos! Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: god’s holy one.’ And Iēsous took him to task, saying, ‘Put a muzzle on it and come out of him!’”
That “put a muzzle on it” is surely, surely designed to seize the eye; quite apart from its linguistic justification, it’s designed to break with the dusty momentum of the past and present the Gospels in something like the tonal register their earliest readers would have encountered.
The question every reader will have to answer is very simple: Is that desirable? When it comes to “Petros” for Peter or “Iōannēs” for John, the answer is immediate: No, it’s not. It merely serves to alienate the monoglot reader with scholarly affectation.
But what about the rest of it? Ruden is never less than interesting, and one of her obvious goals – to transform these most familiar of ancient texts into fresh reading experiences – is reached on every page. The Gospel of St. John in particular comes alive at her touch, revealing all its great strangeness.
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And yet, even in John readers will be driven to decide how much – if at all – they prize innovation or even technical accuracy over the rich heritage of the Gospels that is, after all, one of the treasures of Western culture.
Ruden’s John, for instance, begins: “At the inauguration was the true account, and this true account was with god, and god was the true account.” And the King James Version? Famously and beautifully: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Some of these choices won’t be difficult.
