A campaign is afoot to include humans in UK dictionary definitions of the word 'nature'. Change the definition, change our connection – they say
The Collins Concise dictionary definition of ‘nature’ reads like a relic from bygone times: ‘Plant and animal life, as distinct from man.’
Collins is far from alone, and – blatant sexism aside – a growing body of activists say definitions like this one ignore the frequently damaging impact of humankind on the wider planetary ecosystem.
Now they’re aiming to redress the balance with the #WeAreNature campaign, which calls on major UK dictionaries to change their entries for ‘nature’ to include humans.
Lawyers for Nature, a collective of lawyers, researchers and campaigners working on behalf of the natural world, has partnered with British B Corp interiors brand House of Hackney on the initiative.
“At the moment, nature does not have a voice in the decisions we take that are scientifically proven to be driving climate breakdown and destroying biodiversity,” explained campaign consultant Jessie Mond Wedd. “Our view is that we have separated ourselves from nature and see ourselves as exceptional rather than interdependent on nature, and this is a root cause of our behaviour as a species towards our natural world.”
Campaigners invited academics, creatives, activists, politicians and schoolchildren to come up with their own definitions of nature, and found that their responses overwhelmingly included humans.
Take my Hand: Wistman’s Wood on Dartmoor, England, photographed by Neil Burnell
Environmentalist Ben Goldsmith asserted: “Nature is the living tapestry of all things which shines all around us.”
Writer Robert Macfarlane’s definition read: “The greatest group noun of them all; the entangled web of planetary life of which humans are inextricably part.” And naturalist Chris Packham said that nature is “the entire living world – it, them, me, you and us.”
They believe that a wider meaning of the word has the potential to influence thinking and decision-making on issues that impact nature, by recognising that humankind is also inevitably harmed by damaging actions.
We are witnessing the rising of a collective remembrance and yearning to reconnect, and this is just the beginning
Definitions were dispatched to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which agreed to a small concession: One wider definition of nature as ‘the whole natural world, including human beings,’ is no longer described as obsolete.
Campaigners hope their win will be a stepping-stone to the OED amending its main entry, and in an open letter they are asking other major UK dictionaries to follow suit. Members of the public are invited to add their voices to the campaign by signing a petition.
House of Hackney co-founder Frieda Gormley said: “We have forgotten our connection to the natural world; that we are part of nature and that we need nature. But within this is a story of hope. We are witnessing the rising of a collective remembrance and yearning to reconnect, and this is just the beginning.”
Main image: the Mud Maid at the The Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall, by Tony Hisgett / Flickr
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A campaign is afoot to include humans in UK dictionary definitions of the word 'nature'. Change the definition, change our connection – they say
The Collins Concise dictionary definition of ‘nature’ reads like a relic from bygone times: ‘Plant and animal life, as distinct from man.’
Collins is far from alone, and – blatant sexism aside – a growing body of activists say definitions like this one ignore the frequently damaging impact of humankind on the wider planetary ecosystem.
Now they’re aiming to redress the balance with the #WeAreNature campaign, which calls on major UK dictionaries to change their entries for ‘nature’ to include humans.
Lawyers for Nature, a collective of lawyers, researchers and campaigners working on behalf of the natural world, has partnered with British B Corp interiors brand House of Hackney on the initiative.
“At the moment, nature does not have a voice in the decisions we take that are scientifically proven to be driving climate breakdown and destroying biodiversity,” explained campaign consultant Jessie Mond Wedd. “Our view is that we have separated ourselves from nature and see ourselves as exceptional rather than interdependent on nature, and this is a root cause of our behaviour as a species towards our natural world.”
Campaigners invited academics, creatives, activists, politicians and schoolchildren to come up with their own definitions of nature, and found that their responses overwhelmingly included humans.
Take my Hand: Wistman’s Wood on Dartmoor, England, photographed by Neil Burnell
Environmentalist Ben Goldsmith asserted: “Nature is the living tapestry of all things which shines all around us.”
Writer Robert Macfarlane’s definition read: “The greatest group noun of them all; the entangled web of planetary life of which humans are inextricably part.” And naturalist Chris Packham said that nature is “the entire living world – it, them, me, you and us.”
They believe that a wider meaning of the word has the potential to influence thinking and decision-making on issues that impact nature, by recognising that humankind is also inevitably harmed by damaging actions.
We are witnessing the rising of a collective remembrance and yearning to reconnect, and this is just the beginning
Definitions were dispatched to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which agreed to a small concession: One wider definition of nature as ‘the whole natural world, including human beings,’ is no longer described as obsolete.
Campaigners hope their win will be a stepping-stone to the OED amending its main entry, and in an open letter they are asking other major UK dictionaries to follow suit. Members of the public are invited to add their voices to the campaign by signing a petition.
House of Hackney co-founder Frieda Gormley said: “We have forgotten our connection to the natural world; that we are part of nature and that we need nature. But within this is a story of hope. We are witnessing the rising of a collective remembrance and yearning to reconnect, and this is just the beginning.”
Main image: the Mud Maid at the The Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall, by Tony Hisgett / Flickr
Support solutions in 2024
Positive News is helping more people than ever to get a balanced and uplifting view of the world. While doom and gloom dominates other news outlets, our solutions journalism exists to support your wellbeing and empower you to make a difference towards a better future.
But our reporting has a cost and, as an independent, not-for-profit media organisation, we rely on the financial backing of our readers. If you value what we do and can afford to, please get behind our team with a regular or one-off contribution.
Give once from just £1, or join 1,400+ others who contribute an average of £3 or more per month. You’ll be directly funding the production and sharing of our stories – helping our solutions journalism to benefit many more people.
Join our community today, and together, we’ll change the news for good.
This week I learned that pretty much everyone who’s ever opined about the word “peruse” was wrong, kind of. And the people who corrected the people who opined wrongly were also wrong, kind of. And that I, myself, never quite understood the real deal with “peruse,” even though I thought I had it all figured out.
Here’s the most common way I see “peruse” used these days: “Peruse the charming boutiques.” “Peruse the delicious menu options.” “Peruse the aisles.” In other words, I see “peruse” used to mean “browse.”
Ten or 20 years ago, the only “peruses” I ever noticed referred to reading, not looking at merchandise. From here, the controversy heats up because there are different ways to read something. You can read something closely and carefully, you can skim it casually, or you can read it while paying just the normal amount of attention. And in the early 1900s, people started saying that only one of those is correct.
“Peruse should not be used when the simple ‘read’ is meant,” argued author Frank Vizetelly in the 1906 “A Desk-Book of Errors in English,” which is cited in Merriam-Webster’s
Dictionary of English Usage. “Peruse,” Vizetelly argued, means “to read with care and attention … to examine with critical care and in detail.”
The idea caught on, and within a few decades this rule was standard in prescriptivist handbooks of English like Eric Partridge’s influential 1942 guide “Usage and Abusage.” “Peruse is not synonymous with ‘to read,’ for it means to read thoroughly, read carefully from beginning to end,” Partridge wrote. “One peruses a contract, one reads an (ordinary) advertisement.”
The idea stuck, and to this day anyone who uses “peruse” to mean “skim” or “read” can draw sneers from adherents of this long-held belief.
Strangely, though, it seems Vizetelly based this rule on nothing but his own beliefs. “While we cannot be sure, it appears that this notion of the correct use of ‘peruse’ was Vizetelly’s own invention,” Merriam’s explains. “It was certainly born in disregard of dictionary definitions of the word and in apparent ignorance of the literary traditions on which those dictionary definitions were based.”
What “literary traditions” might those be? Plenty. Notably, lots and lots of passages from Shakespeare, who used “peruse” to mean “read” all the time. A few examples cited in Merriam’s: “I have perused the note” (“The Taming of the Shrew”). “Peruse this writing here, and thou shalt know the treason that my haste forbids me to show” (“Richard II”). “Both they and we, perusing o’er these notes, may know wherefore we took the sacrament” (“King John”). William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Swift also used “peruse” in the more liberal sense, according to Merriam’s.
So when Vizetelly laid down his rule, he was saying, “Do as I say, not as revered writers have done for centuries.” And people listened.
How, then, should modern English speakers use “peruse”? Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (not the same as the usage guide cited above) lists the stricter definition first: “to examine or consider with attention and in detail, study.” But its secondary definition “to look over or through in a casual or cursory manner” can mean to skim a written passage. It can even mean to look at things other than text, like items on shelves in a boutique. So even the loosest usage of “peruse” is acceptable. The dictionary’s final definition, “to read,” allows for careful or hasty reading. Both are fine.
“Yes; one of our definitions for ‘peruse’ is ‘to skim,’” the dictionary explains in a usage note. “However, you should be aware that another of our definitions for this word is ‘to read something in detail.’ Some usage guides feel that the ‘read carefully’ sense is correct and that the ‘skim’ sense is not. Both have been in widespread use for some four hundred years.”
June Casagrande is the author of “The Joy of Syntax: A Simple Guide to All the Grammar You Know You Should Know.” She can be reached atJuneTCN@aol.com.
A Quebec court judge has declared inoperable a portion of the province's language law that requires English-language court decisions to be immediately translated into French.
Dennis Galiatsatos wrote in a May 17 decision the requirement for courts to simultaneously provide a French translation of a written decision rendered in English will slow down the legal process for anglophone Quebecers accused of a crime.
A modification to the Quebec language charter scheduled to come into effect on June 1 states that a French translation must be provided "immediately and without delay."
Galiatsatos says translations can take weeks or months to produce and approve, a process he adds will delay verdicts and force people who opt to be tried in English to wait longer to learn their fate than those who are tried in French.
"By design and in practice, its net effect is that all anglophone Quebecers who are charged with a criminal offence — and who elect to have their trial in English — will be subjected to a longer waiting period to obtain their verdict than similarly situated francophones would. This is no trivial distinction," he wrote.
The judge said the words "immediately and without delay" are incompatible with the language rights in the Criminal Code and should not apply in criminal procedures.
Galiatsatos said he decided to rule on the matter on his own initiative, prompted by the case of Christine Pryde, who is scheduled to be tried in June on charges of dangerous driving, impaired driving and criminal negligence in the 2021 death of cyclist Irene Dehem.
He said the new amendment to the law risks delaying the judgment in a case that has been ongoing for more than three years.
“This would imply that Ms. Pryde, the Crown, Irene Dehem’s family and the citizens of the judicial district of Montreal will all have to wait several additional weeks or months to receive the final judgment, even though it will be ready long before that, sitting on a shelf while we await a translation by the Court Services, which will then need to be reviewed, corrected and approved," he wrote.
Quebec Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette suggested the government will appeal the decision, and maintained that the article in question is neither discriminatory nor intended to delay proceedings.
"It's important that Quebecers can hear, understand and read the judgments of Quebec courts," he said Tuesday. "The language of justice in Quebec is French." He noted that neither party in the Pryde case had asked the judge to rule on the constitutionality of the province's language law, and said the judgment "makes no sense."
In his decision, the judge noted that Quebec’s attorney general has argued that the delays caused by the translation requirement will be relatively brief, that they're justified by the need to promote the French language, and that the Quebec government's use of the Constitution's notwithstanding clause shields the language law from many court challenges.
He rejected those arguments, noting that "even a one-day additional delay while awaiting an unnecessary translation obstructs the operation of the criminal law" and is incompatible with the section of the Criminal Code that mandates an accused be tried in the official language of their choice, which is under federal jurisdiction.
He also said the notwithstanding clause shields the law itself, not the criminal process.
Galiatsatos also rejected the proposal from the Crown prosecutor's office that English verdicts be delivered orally, with written decisions to follow, as "artificial, unworkable and inappropriate." Even if a verdict is delivered orally, he said, the lack of a written judgment will make it hard for the lawyers to file appeals or plan sentencing hearings, and will also reduce the public's access to the legal process.
Canada’s attorney general attempted to block the question from being litigated and then declined to provide written submissions because the statute is provincial, an approach Galiatsatos described as a “head-scratcher."
“Of course the impugned statute is provincial," he wrote. "But the entire point is that it may be encroaching on federal jurisdiction.”
He suggested that judges must disregard "political considerations" when making decisions.
"After all, judges must apply the law without fear or favour and without regard to whether the decision is popular," Galiatsatos said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 21, 2024.
'Straya is a country with a genius for the pithy phrase or shortened word, and etymologist Mark Gwynn has the job of recording the 17,000 and counting that make up the Aussie lexicon.
Gwynn is the editor of numerous Australian Oxford dictionaries and thesauruses and senior researcher with the Australian National Dictionary Centre.
Crickey and strewth, two of Aussie's oldest colloquialisms, are both euphemisms, he tells Nine to Noon.
"Crikey has got to do with Christ's blood and strewth is God's truth."
And bloody, the "great Australian adjective" has been around just as long, he said.
"It was seen as a very taboo word, even in Australia or New Zealand, but it became ubiquitous.
"It was used so frequently it was often commented upon from visitors from the US In the UK that it's used every in every sentence."
Fast forward a century or so and Australia gives the world the word selfie, he said.
"My colleagues over at the Oxford English Dictionary in the UK certainly think that the earliest examples are from Australia.
"That's the earliest evidence I've been able to find as well. Most people would recognise that classic Australian 'ie' suffix that we put on the end of words such as barbie, sunnies, pressies, mushies."
The word spread around the world quickly, as does all language now, he said.
"Now these words are migrating more quickly and vice versa too, we find American-English and British-English being used very quickly in in the Antipodes."
A new entrant into the dictionary is 'eshay' a pig Latin form of slang originating in Aussie youth culture.
"Eshay might come from yes, or 'eshyay', or sesh as in a session of smoking."
It's a word associated with western Sydney youth culture, but has made its way overseas, he said, as programmes such as Heartbreak High are shown on Netflix.
"People are wondering where this, or who this, 'eshay' is."
The Aussie abbreviation is legendary, it's all about familiarity and being part of the group, he said.
"To lower the tone, to be informal and to talk about barbies and sunnies and mushies, it's a classic way that language brings people closer to you."
'G'day maaaate' the classic greeting got a 1980s boost with a Paul Hogan-fronted tourist campaign, he said. Although 'throw another shrimp on the barbie' was more of an Americanism, as no Aussie calls a prawn a shrimp.
The origin of bogan remains an etymological mystery, Gwynn said.
"Originally it was thought it was a word that emerged in the early '80s here in eastern Australia, around Sydney, and that kind of area, and possibly might have been related the Bogan River in New South Wales, which is out west.
"People in Australia might talk about Westies, and people from the west are a little bit rough. And not as sophisticated."
New evidence suggests the word comes from much further west, he said.
"We've found the earliest evidence is coming from Western Australia, the opposite side of the country, which is nowhere near the Bogan River."
For now, this word is classed "origin unknown", he said.
Phrases wax and wane, he said, 'spit the dummy' is not as widely used as it once was.
"Australia is quite creative, but also self-deprecating 'you've got a head like a half-sucked mango' for instance, or 'head like a robber's dog'.
"I mean, these are kind of expressions that that sound cruel, but they're often used on oneself. 'A face like a dropped pie' is one of my favourites."
New phrases entering the lexicon are 'bachelor's handbag' for supermarket cooked chicken and 'flog', he said.
"Flog is quite a well-known one here now, meaning an idiot or a fool. I mean, Australian-English is well known for drongos, ningnongs, boofheads, all sorts of terms for someone that might be a bit of a fool. But flog seems to be the newer version."
Microsoft is going all-in on Arm-powered Windows PCs today with the introduction of a Snapdragon X Elite-powered Surface Pro convertible and Surface Laptop, and there are inevitable comparisons to draw with another big company that recently shifted from Intel’s processors to Arm-based designs: Apple.
A huge part of the Apple Silicon transition’s success was Rosetta 2, a translation layer that makes it relatively seamless to run most Intel Mac apps on an Apple Silicon Mac with no extra effort required from the user or the app’s developer. Windows 11 has similar translation capabilities, and with the Windows 11 24H2 update, that app translation technology is getting a name: Prism.
Microsoft says that Prism isn’t just a new name for the same old translation technology. Translated apps should run between 10 and 20 percent faster on the same Arm hardware after installing the Windows 11 24H2 update, offering some trickle-down benefits that users of the handful of Arm-based Windows 11 PCs should notice even if they don’t shell out for new hardware. The company says that Prism's performance should be similar to Rosetta's, though obviously this depends on the speed of the hardware you're running it on.
Microsoft also claims that Prism will further improve the translation layer’s compatibility with x86 apps, though the company didn’t get into detail about the exact changes it had made on this front.
Emulated x86 apps are a useful stopgap solution, but to take full advantage of Arm chips, developers will need to ship native apps. Luckily for Microsoft, this has become more common in the last couple of years. Google Chrome is finally shipping a native Arm version, as is Dropbox. Adobe also announced today that Illustrator and Premiere Pro would be joining its slate of Arm-native apps later this summer, joining the already-native Photoshop, Lightroom, Firefly, and Express apps.
Essentially all of the major PC OEMs plan to join Microsoft in shipping Arm-based PCs in the next few months, partly because Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips are the only ones with neural processing units (NPUs) fast enough to support Windows 11's new on-device AI features. Dubbed "Copilot+ PCs," the new devices are trying to make Windows-on-Arm happen after more than a decade of failures and at-best-muted successes.
Sign up now to attend JTA’s event with translator Jessica Cohen on May 20 at 6 p.m. ET online.
(J. Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Anyone who has read any books or essays by contemporary Israeli writers has probably encountered the words of Jessica Cohen.
That’s because Cohen is the most in-demand Hebrew-to-English translator working today. In the past year alone, four of her translations have been published: “Professor Schiff’s Guilt,” a novel by Agur Schiff; “Stockholm: A Novel,” by Noa Yedlin; “Every Wrinkle Has a Story,” a children’s book by David Grossman; and “The Hebrew Teacher,” a collection of novellas by Maya Arad. Cohen also translated Grossman’s op-ed on the Israel-Hamas war, titled “Israel is Falling Into an Abyss,” that was published in the New York Times in March.
Over the past 25 years, she has translated more than 30 books and dozens of shorter works by some of the most renowned Israeli writers, including Amos Oz, Etgar Keret, Dorit Rabinyan, Ronit Matalon and Nir Baram. In 2017, she shared the Man Booker International Prize with Grossman for “A Horse Walks Into a Bar,” and four years later, she was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.
How did Cohen, whose website is thehebrewtranslator.com, become the go-to translator for Israeli literature?
“I think it’s a combination of good connections and luck,” she said in a recent Zoom interview from Denver, where she has lived since 2008.
Another key factor: She is completely bilingual in Hebrew and English.
Hebrew translator Jessica Cohen, left, brought her friend and writer Maya Arad’s writing to English-language audiences for the first time in 2024. (Courtesy Cohen)
“Many translators are not bilingual, and it’s certainly not a requirement. But for me, I do feel like it’s very helpful,” she said. “I have both a pretty deep and instinctive understanding of the source language and culture, and I’m translating into my native language.”
Cohen, 51, was born in England and immigrated to Israel with her parents when she was 7. She learned Hebrew at school while continuing to speak and read books in English at home. She studied English literature at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and upon graduating in 1997 moved to the United States with her American-born boyfriend.
“Like so many Israelis, we came intending to stay here for a few years and go back, and 27 years later here, here we still are,” she said. She would go on to marry that boyfriend; they are now divorced and co-parenting their teenage daughter.
Cohen found work doing commercial translation and took up literary translation as a hobby. “I was reading things coming out of Israel that I enjoyed and wished they were in English,” she said. “I thought, well, maybe I could write them in English.”
Meanwhile, she pursued a master’s degree in Near Eastern languages and culture at Indiana University in Bloomington. There, she met Breon Mitchell, a German translator of works by Franz Kafka and Gunter Grass, among others.
Mitchell mentored Cohen and published her first translations — poems by Yehonatan Geffen — in 2000 in a now-defunct journal called Beacons. “I feel privileged to have been present at the earliest stages of Jessica Cohen’s career,” Mitchell said in an email. “I still remember our weekly sessions, discussing her drafts of those poems. They remain among my fondest memories.”
Eager for more work, Cohen contacted Deborah Harris, the literary agent who represents some of Israel’s top writers abroad. Harris liked Cohen’s samples and set her up to translate “Bliss,” an edgy novel about an Israeli woman who has an affair with a Palestinian man by the late Ronit Matalon.
“She was one of Israel’s most critically acclaimed and interesting writers, and in retrospect it was an incredibly difficult book to translate as my first experience,” Cohen said. The translation came out in 2003 and led to an invitation to translate “Her Body Knows” by Grossman, a literary superstar in Israel who is also represented by Harris.
“That was the biggest door-opener for me, and I’ve translated all his work since,” Cohen said, including “To the End of the Land,” his bestselling 2008 novel that was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award.
There are only a half dozen professional Hebrew-to-English literary translators, Cohen said. Arad, who is close with Cohen, said by email that Cohen’s unique skill set distinguishes her from other translators with whom Arad has worked.
In addition to being bilingual, “she has a super sensitive ear for the texts she translates, and she strives to find the right English words and the right register for each book,” Arad said. She also “makes sure every tiny detail is right until the text is perfect.”
For a typical book project, Cohen produces at least three drafts. The first is very rough. While working on the second, she jots down questions about vocabulary or style to send to the author by email. Then she does another round or two of polishing.
“Some writers like to be very, very involved and will really read the entire thing and comment on it,” she said. “Most don’t because they either don’t have the time, or their English isn’t good enough, or they’ve moved on to other things, or they trust me.”
Cohen’s translations often become the urtexts for translations of Israeli books into other languages, rather the original Hebrew versions, she said.
She is currently working on Arad’s “Happy New Years,” which was a hit when it came out in Israel last year. She is also plugging away at Lea Aini’s 2009 novel “Rose of Lebanon.” “It’s one of the best works of Hebrew literature to my mind,” she said.
Is there any kind of book she would decline to translate?
“I would say that I know my strengths, and poetry is not one of them,” she said. “Most poetry translators are poets themselves. I’m not a poet. It’s just not the way my mind works.”
And don’t get her started on the expression “lost in translation.”
“People just inherently assume that a translation is inferior to the original, and I don’t like that assumption,” she said. “A translation is never going to be the same as the original. It’s different, by definition. And there are things that can be gained in a translation. Sometimes there are fortuitous parts of a text that in the translation can gain a whole different level of meaning.”
In addition to her translating work, Cohen advocates for the rights of translators as a member of the Authors Guild. She helped conduct a 2022 survey of literary translators that found that 63.5% of respondents made less than $10,000 per year from translating work and that only 11.5% earned 100% of their income from such work.
“One component of the work that my colleagues and I do is to try to make more translators aware of their rights,” she said. “Pay is obviously the big thing, but there are other issues, like getting royalties and getting proper credit, including having the translators’ names on the cover.”
Despite living in the United States for more than two decades, Cohen said she doesn’t really feel at home here. She grew up in a “very, very secular” family and is not involved in the Denver Jewish community. She stays connected to Israel by reading Haaretz every day and listening to Israeli radio.
“I never have enough time to read everything I would like to, but people send me a lot of books to read that they would like me to translate,” she said. “I try to stay on top of the important things coming out.”
Cohen said she was rattled by the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and their aftermath. In 2017, she donated half of her Booker Prize winnings to the Jerusalem-based nonprofit B’Tselem, which documents human rights violations against Palestinians living in the West Bank. She said the situation now is “so much worse now than in 2017” and called the current war between Israel and Hamas “very dispiriting and horrifying.” (It has also ensnared another prominent Israeli translator, Joanna Chen, whose coexistence essay drew criticism and then was retracted by a literary magazine.)
Cohen believes that Americans, including American Jews, do not read enough books in translation. They can’t possibly understand the complex Israeli story, she said, if they ignore books by Israeli authors.
“I think a lot of people do not have a really full multidimensional understanding of what that country and what that society is,” she said, “and one of the ways to get that bigger picture is through reading.”
This story originally appeared in J. Jewish News of Northern California and is republished with permission.
