En este nuevo vídeo sobre la historia del inglés en 10 minutos vamos a aprender cómo influyó la aparición del diccionario y de los lexicógrafos en la evolución del inglés. El más importante de ellos fue el Dr. Johnson, quién tardó 9 años en completar su diccionario. También veréis cómo se creó lo que más tarde se llamaría el Oxford English Dictionary.
Aquí os dejamos el vídeo:
Y para que os resulte más fácil seguir el vídeo, aquí tenéis la transcripción:
The History of English in Ten Minutes. Chapter 7: The Age of the Dictionary, or the definition of a hopeless task.
With English expanding in all directions, along came a new breed of men called lexicographers, who wanted to put an end to this anarchy, a word they defined as ‘what happens when people spell words slightly differently from each other’.
One of the greatest was Dr. Johnson whose Dictionary of the English language took him nine years to write. It was 18 inches tall and contained 42,773 entries, meaning that even if you couldn’t read, it was still pretty useful if he wanted to reach a high shelf. For the first time, when people were calling you a pickleherring, a jobbernowl or a fopdoodle, you could understand exactly what they meant and you’d have the consolation of knowing they were all using the standard spelling.
Try as he might to stop them, words kept being invented and in 1857 a new book was started that would become the Oxford English Dictionary. It took another 70 years to be finished off. The first editor resigned to be an archbishop, the second died of TB and the third was so boring that half his volunteers quit and one of them ended up in an asylum. It eventually appeared in 1928, and it’s continued to be revised ever since, proving the whole idea that you can stop people making up words is complete snuffbumble.
¡¡Qué tengáis muy buena semana!!
