For a complete Television Schedule booktv. Org. Book two three, 72 hours hours of nonfiction books and authors. Television or serious readers. We kick off this Holiday Weekend with former chief editor of the Oxford English dictionary john simpson on his book the word detective. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for coming out tonight. My name is davids shoulders. On behalf of the staff and our owners bizarre its hard to walking into politics and prose to host john simpson for his book the word detective searching for the meaning of it all at the Oxford English dictionary. I have a few housekeeping notes. If you will take in a cell phones and noisemaking devices and silence those at this time so we dont have any unnecessary interruptions, that would be great. We will also mention that we are, cspan booktv is here today and they will be filming the event. We are doing our own recording as well, and so john will come speak to us for about a half hour and then we will have another half are for questions and answers. With a microphone stationed. Anyway, after the event is over if you will help us, we put the bookstore back together. So if you will take your chair and folded up and leaning against something sturdy that would be a great help to us. Also the books are available to, purchase at the cash register. Te if you havent already done so and then after the event is all over the signing will immediately follow writer at this table. So can you drink of balderdash . What he called the part of a dogs back they cant scratch . If serendipitously you find yourself in sandip then where are you . The answers and great many more can be found in the pages of the Oxford English dictionary, the definitive record of the english language. Theres no better guide to the dictionary as many wonderment and a former chief editor john simpson. The word detective, a a personal memoir and a joyful celebration of english, he weaves a story about words come into being and sometimes disappear, how cultures shapes language we use and how technology has conformed not only the way we speak and write but also how words are made. The book reviews, its awaiting them are from a dictionary editor who insist he is not a quote word lover. A captivating celebration of a life among words. John simpson was the chief editor of the Oxford English dictionary for 20 years until 2013 and during his tenure to manage the digitization of the dictionary and initiated itsir third edition scheduled for completion in 2037 took over sing some 70 editors at the time. Time. John is an emeritus fellow and rights and research is wide on literary and historical issues. He now coedits the james joyce notes on the rhine online. Please join me in welcoming john simpson. [applause] good evening. Ive never been filled so much at one time, except maybe when im walking down the streets in london. Anyway, i havent got a publisher with me today. What ive done its is ive invented a publisher to introduce me. Hes called to go. Hes not my publisher. He sort of amalgam of whatt publishers used to be like in the old days. Hes called to go. Welcome to everyone. Im absolutely delighted welcome to everyone. Im absolutely delighted that so many people have come along tonight to celebrate the publication of johns book. Much of which ive already read on the train. Id like to ask john a fewquestion questions about the word detective and help those of you have not read it to the end will get an oppression why im told we are so keen to publisher. John, you spent many years working on the Oxford English dictionary. O why did you write this memoir and how does it differ from other accounts of the oed . Then he hands it over to me. I wrote the word detective because i wanted, i have have read so many books about the history of the oed, the problems between the editors and the publishing staff, all the the difficulty in the 1970 getting the book together. Ul its a massive book, and nasa project but actually that misses the fun of writing, document the history of words which is what exit called it is all about. All i was trying to do was to enthuse people to enjoy writing about the history and researching each of their language. How i people ask how i came to write the book and its pretty straightforward. About six months before i left the University Press in oxford in 2013, for some reason the press department put out a press release is how i was leaving. I think possibly just very pleased. But anyway, i i did know why they did this. They put out a press release and various newspapers got hold of it and he ran stories like oed his cheeks were detective leaves after 37 years. Thats what i got the idea of the word detective from. And then i did various interviews, Time Magazine did an interview for me. That was instrumental interview. It was a question and answer and it was interesting. So many journalists come along to the oed and they come along with their preconceptions of us in long white beards, all male, ive always been all male. We spend our time staring at our desks and writing Outlook Index cards with definitions on. In some way thats true but really its a stereotype of lexicography which i was trying b to avoid writing the book. As a result of that, i got a phone call from david kuhn loser new York Literary agent, saying i thought you were quite interesting as you came over in the Time Magazine piece. Do you think theres any point in thinking about writing a book about your experience on the dictionary . And if so, maybe we can take you around to some publishers and see what they think. I said im far too busy at the moment. Ive got six months ago, very,hs very important work. Lets talk about it when i finish. Six months later i was out of the door and i thought well, lets give it a try, see if we can make dictionary work sound fun to people. The stereotypes of some that have dogged me throughout my 30 3740 years on the oed and the introduction to the book i wrote a little piece about this sort of stereotyping that we get in books and films. I was talking about the excitement of writing dictionaries. This is a very specific kind of excitement. Its different from the excitement portrayed in ball of fire, my favorite film about reference books. I used to play a few minutes of this 1941 screwball comedy to groups of summer scores i taught years ago. I suspect they thought it was the best part of the court in the film the erudite looking gary cooper is a grammarian entity of editors engaged in a noble task of writing encyclopedia. The professors had quiet lives the sort that quite and fits into the vibrant work of dictionary editing. In particular, they are unfamiliar with the potential of jive talk and hip cats. As luck would have it gary cooper stumbles across Barbara Stanwyck disguised as a nightclub singer sugar push oshea. He and his cell editors rather take a shine to her. They stink out at night to listen to her vocabulary, so they say. Gary cooper is asked them benefit from his integument for sugar posts and sugar buzz is eventually rescued from numerous potential mishaps by the kindly hearted editors. This is not exactly how things worked on the Oxford English dictionary. We never knowingly called anyone sugar puss. Thats a sort of story tight but it does indicate excitement that i felt in the work when i was working there. So in the book that are sort of forming aspects i wanted to draw into it. Original wanted to write a book that was just a book of the decorations about words come interesting things i would find out about words and how i approached them. You had to come to words from the site. They never go headon. You are always looking at strange aspects of, looking at how people use words in the past, trying to sort of push, when you read a a sense of a 17th century cake, trying to push it out of shape so it helps you to understand the definition of the actual word you are working on. Its sort of a strange way of looking at things but i always like to look at things sideways rather than front on. What i i wanted to talk about the language, how its changed overua the time i was at the dictionary. The background of the book is its more or less starts when i play for jump on the dictionary and it finishes more or less today. Theres no early life, i was in school, had, had a lovely time doing whatever, my first girlfriend or anything like that. Unfortunately, maybe that will be volume two, but it starts with applying for a job can find a job on the dictionary and i go from there. Its a bit about of my life, my friends, friends of addiction friends outside the dictionary my family. But ibut i interweave that with i think about 60 little boxes about words. Take the word like paraphernalia or 101 as a kind of classicac college, and track the history of that overtime, as far as the oed is able to demonstrate it. I have of you that any word in the language is interesting if he just spent five minutes to do a little bit of research about it and then write it up. I talked about the words, the language and the time of addiction,addiction, how we went from addiction in book form to the dictionary on computer computer, which is what it is now. And how were opening up access for people to read the dictionary by putting it online over a long period. John, that is a very dashing this mac this if you go again. Thats a very convincing answer. When i read the odd passage from the book on the train i was surprised at the informality of the style. Can you talk about how you can find writing about a very formalro and revered document such as the Oxford English dictionary . Perhaps youd like to read as short section to give us a flavor of the book. Th when i first joined the oed in 1976, i had not been at oxford before. I had been at york studying english, and oxford, it was quite a forbidding place. And i think at the time oxford scholarship, the arts addiction was something that was held in all and it was quite difficult for people, especially new editors to unravel that, to see through what was there and what were trying to do, that which is really trying to explain the meaning and history of words. So part of years i was there was really getting myself into what the dictionary was trying to do and sort of becoming less in awe of it. I think all of the staff when they joined went through this procedure. To give you some idea of what it was like as a new editor, i thought i would read a bit from the book about my first interview at the University Press. Es i had been living in reading, about 50 miles away, and i was doing an ma in medieval studies. Ud didnt think it would fit me for too much in the world, and then again i found that it did, whichd was great. Because we always find, we often find that people with a medieval background actually a pretty wellsuited for looking at words, but back from the medieval period into the old english. And right up to the present day whereas if you only have a history of knowing about language in the 19 19th century,fi you find it more difficult to deal with 16th, 17th century medieval so it is, it did in the internet to be useful to have that sort of background. T anyway, i have been called interview, and the University Press porter let me into the grand quadrangle, or quad. Before had a chance to reach the sumptuous lunch i was directed out to one side. En you didnt expect the full y splendor of the place unless you deserved it. Or i found the personal department and my recentpa correspondent the colonel. El the colonel was a human face of the personal department and he was a delightful military chap, retired of course in something of a leftover from the days when old soldiers ruled personnel. He was certainly more of a character actor wilford hyde white, colonel pickering of my fair lady. Quite short, deborah, balding, chatty and military. Ng we shook hands and then he sank in his seat behind a substantial desk while i was directed towards an easy chair designed principally to make you feel that you were not the most important person in the room. We talked about magnets of history at the University Press as seems to the eyes of the personal department and we wondered how easily i must find a reading to oxford, if i i were fortunate enough to be offered the position. The distance with 25 off but i discovered later there were people who thought civilization ended just a few hundred feet outside the old city walls. Others are said to say the sun rises over the collagen sets over worchester. Worchester college of is. Wouldnt be much point in referring to the city of i worchester. I have my little interview with him and then he takes the read to the picture department at a meet the chief editor and never interviewed ethics. I will leave you to discover whatwhether i got the job or not. [laughter] but you can see im trying not to write the sort of book when you go from footnote to footnote discussing the particular policies and all that sort of thing. I was really just trying to write and approachable, i hope reasonably entertaining book about my time at the oed. We will get onto words in a few minutes. John, this is me. Its not somebody else actually. Thats a very convincing answer. [laughter] its great when you are in charge of your script. Im told by the editors as it were detected you and dispersed the text with educational snippets about the history of english. Is this a true . Has pick up already explained what i wanted to do was to take words, so many books about language take this sort of wellknown examples of words and take you through them. If you read any history of english, you will find descriptions of the words are in all the other descriptions of history. And if i if i saw working new paragraph i had just written which i thought was of interest, i check it in the oed, check with the story was, in the just write it out for my perspective. But with the facts that are in the oed. Bu so on the one hand i was showing you the detail of the oed holds but also trying to approach it in a way that was readable. This was quite a difficult diction or to read sometimes. If you are not familiar with it. This is an example of one of the little books i had with the word transpire. I dont know if you are aware of the meaning transpire but i have about 60 of these word boxes that describe individual words so if you will go with me withll this we will see what happens to transpire. Ive got one on, i dont know, omnibus and bus. All sorts of things. Ngs. They are quite fun. In the mid to late 18th century the verb transpire cause no end of argues between otherwise healthy individuals. There were people who think the word should mean what they used to mean and any deviation from this is heresy, a fallacy. It somehow related in its origin to latin ignorant. Logic is argument over words for the greek lover for work. Transpire at least its aged equivalent as a little meeting in classical latin but over the centuries English Speakers have to use the technical term mangled of this. The word transpire is known in english from the latter end of the 16th century and it derived from latin, trance as an across transsiberian, et cetera, to breathe, inspiration, spirit, et cetera. To so you expect it to mean something to do with transmission by breathing. Heres how the oed views that whole meeting. Two calls to pass an estate of vapor through the walls or service of the body, especially to give up our discharge waste matter from the body through the skin. So thats of the old meaning of the word. As we move through the 17th century the range of context in which the term could be employed to grows but the core meaning remains constant, perspiration comes into rather vaguely. Liquid passing from inside or outside or from outside doing. It turned out to be quite useful work and emerging sciences of the early modern period and was heading for stardom. The first hiccup on the road to the hotel occurred in 1748. It concerned the lord chesterfield who as a style leader later annoyed dr. Johnson by withdrawing support on his proposed dictionary when the noble lord realized it was burning off plan i. E. Johnson accepted language changes and wasnt necessary inching nearer to affection of addiction should be open to this. In 1748 lord chesterfield rather ironically and despite his gentle clowns on language of change decided to use the verb transpire in a figurative way. It was new to english though not too french. When writing to what is cosponsored this is what he wrote. Ro this letter goes to you you in that confidence which i place in you and you will therefore not let one word of it transpire. Tely n theres nothing wrong with that should you be the sort pushing to find things wrong with language. The french have developed this earlier in the 18th century. What lord chesterfield was saying was he did not want one word in the content of his letter to permeate from this current secret private state through to public view. Publi the development from the physical transpiration to the medical for one is easy and unexceptional but when it came to address the word in his dictionary dr. Johnson found even this minor semantic shift too much. S innovative from france without necessity. What happened next set language periods into a deep decline. According to the oed it was an american lady, Abigail Adams wife of the second president of the United States who is credited with writing in 1775 to husband of the Continental Congress in philadelphia, there is nothing you transpired since i were to last. Im sure others used it in this way before she is but at the moment she has all the credit. Language appears hated this new meaning to occur, to happen. What, no permeation or only permeation of transmigration of the looses a variety of innocence at something moving something moving from one state, nothing happening, to another state, something happening. Organic change should that happen in the plight 18 century. The fact that it might well be a mechanism and americans are not really on top of anyone to dance card in britain. Probably made the usage even less popular in britain than itt might have been. The First Edition of the oedof the thats in the letter t from early 20 century, despairs despairs. It is a misuse. The dictionary offer some assistance. Evidently arising from misunderstandings such as afrom mis sense as what had transpired during his absence he did not know. Which is itself an idiomatic and confusing way of saying something. The oed was following in the footsteps of earlier lexicographer such of the american Joseph Worcester who wrote in 1850 is novel use of the work is pretty common in the United States, nor does it appear to be uncommon in england though it has repeated censured by judicious critics both here and there as improper. Worcester doesnt seem to my buy too much though. It transpires. [laughter] i have to transpire through me. The one question im always asked an event asked every day since 1976 when i first joined the dictionary as how does a a new word get into the dictionary . And in the old days before the internet, we had a stock answer and reset the people, if we have in our card files five examples of your word or a sense of the word, spanning a five year time span, then we will consider putting it in the dictionary. Then the internet came along and back are completely thrown out the window because you get 10,000 examples of a misspelling so we could hardly use that as example. I would might put misspellings and because were not trying to prescribe how people should use the language people try to say this is how its used. Use of the evidence that shows how it is used. But we will sometimes say this is nonstandard if we can maybe people need to be ward of using it in front of their maiden aunts or something. So, new n and so new words nowadays find a way into the oed or into any of the big National Dictionary probably looking for several030,000 thousand, 20,000, 30,000 hits on google for example, but we dont just use it as a checklist. Reuse also to databases criteria and we have a balancingf act of whether we put in air quotes or not routed definitions but just as an expression or air guitar or whatever. So were looking at all sort ofin wid sources. Widespread, use or widespread use within a particular science visit or geography or something before it gets considered. Whats in the oed it stated states of it is that addiction that throws things up. And expands and expands to when i first, the First Edition of the dictionary was 10 volumes long, and that was completed in 1928 but the 10 volumes were too bulky so that immediately was rebound in a reissue as 12 volumes. Weve then prepared a one volume supplement which was founded in 24 volumes and such. Hen pr so then went 16 volumes. We didnt produce a secondit edition in 1989 with new material which was then 20 volumes. And then we went through the process of working out whetherer we could digitize it. But ill get to that in a minute. So new words, theres a nice new word spanking which would put into the dictionary i think in the 1990s but at the kind of caribbean dance, i skank. I dont know if you know it or anyone wants to demonstrate it. [laughter] we had a lot of index cards for the word and sent in by readers all around the world which is how we collect information in those days. Nowadays they tend, they are encouraged to send it in electronically circumstantially database in oxford. But we had enough evidence for the word spanking to want to put in the dictionary. None of our consultant seems to know what it meant against their most academic and such. We didnt at the time of a Popular Culture consultant i dont think. I thought i was the popularen i consultant when i first joined addiction at the age of 24 so i thought i i was the eyes and ears on the street of the dictionary. I did know what it was even though id taken a great interest in 1976 and pumped in 1936 when his headlights. I thought all words on these two areas are to be in the oed so like hold all sorts of outoftheway magazines and read them and carted it up with the index cards in our files so unsuspecting editors would come along and find them and how to put these words in the dictionary. That didnt really work because the oed had perfectly good ways of collecting information. I happened to be on a radio program, no, Television Program in london with a produce performance poet benjamin. Hes very well known in the uk. And so i thought make myself unpopular as lexicographers often do by asking them to define the word skank or skanking. He gave me a very funny look when i asked him. As people often do and use of it had to be used to it if youre a lexicographer. And he said, well, i cant tell you what it means. I thought maybe he didnt want to tell, to let this a term from caribbean west Indian Culture seek out into the oed and open to the whole world, but if they did genuinely didnt really have, i never thought about before and didnt immediately, lexicographers think of the vocabulary he needed forg. Skanking. Source should the next time he was in oxford, actually at the time he was forming the other side of oxford probably, he would come along to the office and it was trying to form and i could get my little notepad out and write it. Jimmy duffy did. About a month later i got a phone call and say i got to form in bristol or somewhere and ill come to oxford. And ill skank for you in your office. I didnt know anybody else at the dictionary this was going on because i thought i might get taken upstairs and put into a locked room. R but anyway he came along and we cleared an area in front of my desk. It was looking out onto one of the main streets into oxford, so if you happen to be going pastst the time you are quite sort of a festival display of the. We cleared an airy and he stood there and he use a little bita embarrassed to start with. I havent got music, sorry. We are not in west india either. But eventually he got into it and he started skanking and he said its a bit like cleaning windows. I can do it anyway. Nto it a [laughter] i was writing down what i thought it was about and try to do a pattern and that sort of thing. Eventually he stopped, exhausted, and probably a bit embarrassed and that he had to go off into his real performance his that day and left it with the job of writing the definition. That was the first and only time ive ever actually ask somebody to come in and demonstrate a definition for me. The definition is in the dictionary now. If you want to look at it you are welcome to. And that was how one of the new words cut into the dictionary. A bit clumsy hugo. Johnjohn, thats a very convincing answer. [laughter] i think we all know the story about original oed was written from books such as the shrek Elizabeth Murrays caught in the web of words and making the oed which is a recent book about the history of the oed project from the early days up to the present day. But you were there when the decision was taken to put the oed online. How has it all come about . Originally, putting, the idea of putting the oed online in the 19 eighties, early 191980s it was first moved, we could know whether the dictionary was going to go. It was a printed dictionary. We produced, which is about finished producing a 25 year project for a supplement to the dictionary. We produced these four volumes. The University Press didnt havedo the heart to do another set of supplements on top of the supplements, then the prospect of another set off of that and it is a nightmare, what were going to were going to do with the oed. Was it going to be left to fossilized . We and some of the guys in the press, one or two of them sorted with commodore unlike their colleagues sort of had the idea that maybe this new fangled technology in computers could dohi something for the dictionary we submitted a different maybe it will help us, if you could manage to but the diction are some a onto computer. Maybe that was going future of it. It was a very risky project at the time. We were one of, we were one of the standard generalized markup language of the people who sortmanaged of managed the standard coding for these Little Things that we were one of the pet projects, at the time such a big project. We are not big data these days but we were at the time. So we were very popular amongst academic researchers, as a guinea pig. It was all at the same time as the human genome project and these big ideas about how we can understand cognitive understand language if we put the whole of the oed onto a computer and it will somehow solve all our problems. That never really worked but were not going to tell that at the time. We thought it wouldnt it. So within developed a project to put the dictionary on computer. Theres a nice little bit inere lo here about what we were losing by doing that. What the old printing business was like. There was one event that happened at the time this is in the mid 80s, that symbolize two things. First, the way were shuffling off the old traditions of printing and dissemination and secondly, a whirring attitude helped in part of oxford towards the icons of the past. They shark an editor and i, two of my colleagues at the presstw and me, had joined one of the educational visits made from time to time to oxford editors into the brick works at the back back of the University President of the somebody was done by third parties around the world, many techs are still printed in oxford in those days the io was printing machine stood two stories tall like a massive machines you see in the old clips in newspaper offices putting up sheet after sheet. It was a very impressive side. We we were walking with our group along a narrow corridor and a gallery half foot of the print room when we came across an older man throwing squares of metal into a roaring furnace. E. On further investigation it appeared this is not some job creation schema part of the oxford printers recyclingcheme bu initiative. In the past juju storerooms had been stocked with the old copper printing plates. Oo over time the plates reward as they were continually use at work no longer of use. Eventually they were recycled todo be melted down and to be reused. To our alarm we discovered the heavy copper plates of the old man was committing to the inferno were, in fact, printing plates once used to print the oed. Needless to say, add and i, the two editors, were horrified but was seen to be the will for the sake history. The shark, commercial director was also shocked, no doubt as a shirt or concerns a clearly in addition lamented the loss of the windfall revenue of the heritage. We halted the burning and salvaged what we could. To recoup some revenue we sold some of the put the University Press bookshop in oxford. Luckily, carded other some other bicycles. But the use of the word inferno there, which i wont carry on, and issues be going into an word box about the word inferno which is of some interest because you think of the very old word in english but its a word that came at a lecture through dantes inferno. Earlier we had from latin, italian obviously, we already had the word inferno from french from the middle ages who sort of knew what inferno was but the word inferno itself doesnt fight its way into english except in reference to dantes work in the middle of the 18th century. I think ive got to be quite soon. Theres various, ive got various things i could say, but i think probably the best thing to do is if i dont. Is ift [laughter] john, thats a very convincing answer. [laughter] all the things that all goode to an things must come to an end. Your closing paragraph perhaps. This is only a paragraph so its very short. Its about what happens, what happens to me and my family after i stop working on the oed, what we do now . As for me maybe im just working on various projects of the past that weve forgotten and rerunning them for a new age online. It took me a while to realize that was what id like to invest and that was what is best at. Not everyone has the patience. Bu im just an old bloke whos been lucky enough to do an extra job. I suppose shes right. She usually is. Thank you. [applause] if anyone has any questions you are very welcome to ask me or hugo if its a difficult one. Could you go, it may be difficult i think. If you say your question then i will repeat it so the cameras can hear. Spirit the funding of the oed. Who is funding it . The question is who is funding the oed and who will fund it in the future . [laughter] it wont be that. Its entirely funded by the University Press and oxford. Oup is about as University Press in the world. It has been able in the past to fund the editorial work on the oed which still, even thoughth its now online, it doesnt make money. It just doesnt lose money as much as it did in the past. So we did have a small amount of government funding for theing fo computerization project, hundreds of thousands of pounds rather than millions of pounds but that was great very specific project. Essentially it is funded by the University Press for the benefit of scholarship. Are there other moderner languages that has Something Like the oed . Are there other modern languages that Something Like the oed . And the answer is i would say no, but the answer is yes. The french, for example, not quite the same as the oed. Oed. Its multi volume. Y it was originally part of a major project, to slice up the language and have different. Of the language. But, in fact, what theyve done is they produce a dictionary from the 18th century up to the present day but with data with etymologies right back to the earliest period. So that is a very good comprehensive dictionary of english. The oed started in 1884, started publishing in 1884, and completed in 1928, which is 44 years later. It wasnt the first of the big National Historical projects to start. The first was grins dictionary, and that goes back to the 1840s. People always think the editor of the oed must work very, very slowly to take 44 years or whatever, writing a book. In i grins dictionary will start and i think 1848 and was was completed in 1960. [laughter] i mean, they did some great work but their articles are rather more aspect the oed is very, very structured. And very logical. You can see the Logical Development of words very easily if you know how to read the dictionary. The grimms dictionary took 110 years to complete their bed and started then started, five years later they started on a revision. But you cant really revive something easily that is the work of four generations of editors which is what the case with the grins. At the moment the oxford project project was spent and a think it is probably there was a big spanish dictionary project that started, im not sure when it started. It took about 30 years getting to the letter a calm and they then put that in mob boss because it was too expensive and too collocated. People have these grand victorian schemes of classifying everything. To in fact the oed, the gaza put t together the original policy for the oed were very canny because they made it compact enough that even though it took almost 50 years, it was filled just about doable and you could bring your publisher along with you over that. Period but i didnt have more with the spanish dictionary. Those dictionary, a spanish spanish dictionary was a national project. It was funded by the Spanish Government i believe. They have now started a much come with much more of a another project which might we hope eventually become a National Dictionary. Theres a norwegian dictionary, and swedish dictionary. Dictio theretheres an australian National Dictionary, one volume, but the language from captain cook up to the present day. Theres just the second edition of that has come out. There are national dictionaries throughout the english and french, Spanish Speaking world. But i like to think the oed has got something on many of them. The dutch dictionary actually took longer than the grimms dictionary to complete. They said say they are the biggest dictionary in the world, but i dont believe them. China . There isnt a chinese historical dictionary. And there is a japanese one i dont think. They very much would like to be one. In korea where people look at the possibility of doing it but its a matter of some alarm that they havent got a dictionary like in the oed. The lady in the middle. Who decides what is nonstandard . And also when you have a word like concerning, which, you know, is now increasingly being used instead of worrying, drives me nuts. Is that labeled as slang . So to supper questions nonstandard and then once identified as slang. Okay. So who identifies with the work is nonstandard or not, and how did you determine whether a word should be labeled a slang or is standard english . Nonstandard, standard, we really are going from the evidence and from the genres of text in which a word is found. So if a word is only found on the internet and is used in informal conversation, and its never found in formal discourse, that will help us both with the issue of whether its nonstandard or whether its slang or colloquial. We are really affect context in which words are used. If a word is never, is only use originally, then we are likely to say it is nonstandard. Sa if its only used, if its a known that it is a term that people correct, we dont necessarily correct but style purists correct and theres anan issue about, then we might indicate that that is nonstandard or, but the concept of standard is difficult because it changes through generations over the years. So a change in the language. So a cha the verb to finalize in thein th 1920s was very much dislike ins the uk because it was an americanism. It was not like, start guide said it wasnt the word to use but we wouldve said it wasse nonstandard at the time. But nowadays nobody has any idea that it was an american originally, and it takes about maybe, i tend to think it takes about 50 years for something to work through the generations to become fully accepted. And for people to forget where it came from. One of the problem i have in the book is that people forget things about language. I am trying to remind them about various facts that help you understand of a worker so there isnt this long period of time over which the older generationl use will use one type of word and the Younger Generation will do the new ones. The older generation will say thats just slang. Younger people say we is that all the time. Its not really slang. It sort of a balancing act of describing it. Nl in some ways thats easy on the internet that in the book because if you print the book is there forever. We can review things continually in a dynamic database. Id like to go back to the historical question on the french could you speak into the microphone please . Excuse me . He said could you go to the microphone please . In the french historical dictionary, do they reference the historical for example, in the oed, when the oed takes a reference from the king james 1611 bible they put chapter verse. Do the french do that . Yes. They do for the 18th century onwards. The question is, does a french dictionary that are talking about get chapter and verse for all of its examples like the oed does . And the end is when they give an example and they do get chapter and verse but they dont give as many examples as the oed so they get maybe one example, may maybe the first example theyve got for a particular use. So they will give proper Geographic Information but they dont have anything like as much documentation as the oed. About three quarters of the oed is documentation and the rest of it is etymology andd pronunciation and definition et cetera. [inaudible]orre there was a project at the end of the 19 century as you might expect when youre classifying everything when all of the counties in england had the own little glossary of regional words. They were all amalgamated in the victorian period into the english dialect dictionary by Professor Joseph wright at the university of oxford. So there is, i am, not myself forbut my family comes from yorkshire, and so when my father moved south he brought various yorkshire terms with him which were then used in the south when we were growing up thinking they were just language. It turned out he was using his own fathers words. Its whatever the spec thats how language, regional words are dispersed around the country. There are one or two, obviously it happened when english dialect was,was, the english language came to america but also when people went in the 18th century to australia. There is a common firm and australia, to fall sick, to hunt around for something. We know that it was taken to illustrate from britain. Its not an aboriginal word but the only evidence we ever found for it in britain is in about three different counties. So its one of these words that is been taken probably by just what the two people who went across either settlers orrs are transport his to australia. The word some out stuck there, there maybe begin used in mining or something. Its interesting to see if things go out in different if wewe dont expect it. Thats why we try to collect information from all around the world to cover the english th language. [inaudible]t wond i was just one if you talk about how you gather yourseou expertise through the Reading Programs, who the readers are, for your experts are . And i had another question separate from that but if you think youre such a thing as ament f temperament for a lexicographer . You should read chapter 11 or something. [laughter]of so the first question was how programs. [inaudible] i know its a massive network. In the old days the readers were measured gentlemen and their lady wives. A lot of clergymen clergymen, clergyman is wise, that sort of thing. Cl people who had come which we dont have these days, so we have a different type of we are two types of readers. We have readers who are not on our Reading Program, and are paid for what they produce. And we have readers that send thingsthinks and for the love appeared in many ways people come some off people just send thinks and because they want to contribute to the history of the language, produce some of the best that we ever get. [inaudible]appeal we appeal to them sometimes the people just, they got this itch to contribute. Its like crowdsourcing to some extent. But are they the type of person . Often op often the people who want to help are the right people. I sit in the book a lot of them sometimes we have we tend not to appoint linguists, for example. Ot you think on a dictionary youyo would want to appoint linguists. Actually we appoint people have an ability and an awareness of the language and an analytical ability, and an interest in the wide range of things. Im not saying all linguists dont sometimes people want to become lexicographers dont necessarily have the sort of broadness of touch of what wed would like. The readers can be an eclectic lot. They can be in all good luck. Theyve got to be awkward people to some extent. I am one of them spirit you are possibly one of the worst space i worked on the srp. Right. The sar [inaudible] spearing the scholarly Reading Program is usually used for the more academic types because were asking you to read second literature and provide information that scholars have a produced about the word. We also have a historical read program were people as to 17 and 18 century text if they have an dont awareness can our files flooded with lots and lots of examples of to contemplate in the 17th century because somebody thinks it is interesting usage if weve already got it. So for that sort of rating, historical reading, you want people with an awareness of language any particular time. Everyone has to be very practical. Everybody has to be quite obsessive, and everybody has to be ready to be wrong. Are you any of those things . Okay. Thats good. I was on the but srp was the best fit. The north American Breeding program which we set up in 1989ich we s was one of the first time we actually started collectingrather information on computer rather than on index cards. It was sort of, we did know again whether that would work. A lot of the things we do we dont know whether their work or not but thats how we go forward. So that was an exciting time. We are in the air of texting and twitter. This sort of contractions or abbreviations, contractions or abbreviations but one of them is bff, best friend forever. Ud is that include in the dictionary . The most wellknown, lol for example, is in the dictionary. Weve got no objection to including the because there are linguistic marks. I mean, that i words, part of the language. Theres no reason they shouldnt be there. We have to balance what weve got time to do so whether its worth adding a whole series of abbreviations in preference to new developments in chemistrych for example. Web two sort of balance where our time is. There are more words that even the oed has got room for. But yeah yeah, theres no reason why they shouldnt be in. Its not that we say its a dreadful use of language. We are not going to have any, hugo, he doesnt like it. I feel like i want to come back to you. Spilling the oed ever take a position on grammar . [inaudible] spirit we dont take positionn but we take, we monitor it. We say, we try to show people can we let other people take positions but its not really our job to stand up and say you must do this, you mustnt do that. We are not educators. But we say this is the documentary evidence we found for this use as opposed for you and i as opposed to you and me a particular grammatical context here we are trying to illustrate whats there rather than Say Something is right or wrong. But we will indicate what is nonstandard. But we dont get on our soapboxt until people off for it. Spirit how many words are there in the english language . Just let me start. Hang on, one i forgot one. [laughter] there are about 686,000 words and compounds in the oed. N thats the english today only because back to the old english. And its not just english british but its around the world. You could say there are almost a aon the o million. On the other hand, theres a website thats been tracking words and they came up with their 1 millionth word several years ago. On the other hand, how manyy words do you actually used in everyday speech . You cant really even believe those words. People say that you might now 20,000 words and use 40,000. Other people say you might know double that. So theres no really way of getting into your brain to work at. Ev so dont believe anything like that. I dont think. Time for one more. Re im interested in the administration. You were the boss, is that right . Such a t. I was at the chief editor. So you hired and fired, good things come to office like standard and nonstandard and people were arguing about . What ended up in your office . You mean, let me remind myself. I started off as a sort of come as a basic editor so i was given my bundle of index cards in the states and i do work to the right definitions, research the history of them in conjunction with the research and libraries of a couple of washingtonve colleagues in the audience today. So, so you have to be able to do theng, and as basic editing, first one editing, then as you get moreit experience you oversee of editors but you also have to do, finding yourself in a nibbler to involved in administration trends of running the project. I thought if youre working on the oed you should work on the oed. You should demonstrate to the other, we have 75 editors working with the dictionary and i thought what the person in charge ought to be seeking to beork. Doing is real editorial work so i always did that rather than spend my time in meetings. S at various times i got more or less involved in budgets andnd things but i but i always seem to get them right. They just seem to be happy to let me get on with the words. Thank you so much for coming tonight. [applause] [inaudible conversations] this is booktv on cspan2 television for serious readers. Heres our primetime lineup for christmas eve. That all happens tonight on cspan2s booktv