3rd
September
2023
A stack of books
With too much time on my hands. I’ve been sitting here remembering some of the most valuable books I ever bought. Not valuable in terms of dollar value but in perception. I am referring to the different dictionaries I purchased along the way in different languages and different interests : English, French, Latin, Spanish, Irish, music. Yes! I even had a music dictionary required in university. I thought that my world was made when I got my first real Oxford. But oddly about this same time I stopped using dictionaries. Not that I read everything, but the Internet arrived and with it the need to search endlessly for meanings and pronunciations and spellings evaporated. If I came even close my web browser will put me on the right track. And so the dictionaries move to their own place on the back of the bookshelf. What brought me here today? Well watching a video both the evolution of English. English is a living language and a growing language and the changes in my own lifetime or substantial. Why do you know I no longer need a dictionary? Probably I do but I have become stubborn and if I can’t figure word out I will simply go to the net and find the answer. The idea of thumbing through volumes in alphabetical order is a thing of the past. I’m not even sure if my children own dictionaries. I mean they probably do but they’ve grown up in the world that I have and they have the same modern tools as I do. I’m sure they have evolved too being second find a meaning without taking a book down from the shelf. I don’t know what this holds for the history of learning or what it holds for bookstores or anything else. They are all part of my past and from now on I will simply ask someone beside me how to spell something. Remember with the web browser you do not need to be exact
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