Market research done in Britain on dictionary use reveals that 66% of people consult a thesaurus and a dictionary at least once a month, that more than 50% of adults feel that a dictionary should be replaced after 5–10 years of use, that most people going into a bookshop to buy a dictionary don’t know what they want, and don’t ask for help. To help you find what you want when you buy a dictionary, print this article out, and take it with you to your local bookshop.

If you’re buying a dictionary for a child, consider her age and the function that the dictionary will serve. Is it for an English-speaking child improving her vocabulary, or for one learning English for the first time? If it’s for yourself, do you merely want something that will be a quick guide to difficult spellings? There are dictionaries for mother-tongue speakers, which are usually monolingual (the entire dictionary is in one language); there are dictionaries for English learners, which are either bilingual or monolingual. Small children find it difficult to use a bilingual dictionary, so these should be given only when a child is about 10+.

Number of headwords
The next thing to look for is the number of headwords, i.e. the number of words defined in the dictionary. You’ll nearly always find this information on the cover. Remember that learners of English as a second language need dictionaries with fewer and simpler entries. An English-speaking child at junior primary level (age 7– 9) needs a dictionary with 5,000 headwords, at senior primary level (age 10–12) 30,000 headwords, at junior secondary level (age 13–15) 45,000 headwords, and at senior secondary level (age 16–18) 65,000 headwords. A standard adult dictionary, such as The Concise Oxford Dictionary, contains ± 140,000 meanings, although a fanatical Scrabble player or lover of language would probably want The Shorter Oxford Dictionary with 335,000 words. Professionals whose business is language – lawyers, journalists, publishers, writers – use the work of scholarship on the English language, The Oxford English Dictionary, which traces the meanings and usage of 500,000 words from their first use to the present.

The function of dictionaries
By the way, the function of dictionaries – and the lexicographers who compile them - is to record the way language is used, not to fossilise it. “Fantastic”, “nice” and “gay” are all words whose meanings have changed substantially over the last 100 years. In fact, language is now changing so fast that dictionaries are being updated all the time to include new words such as “yuppie”, “liposuction”, “gentrification” – none of which existed as words 15 years ago.

The language of the definitions
Having established that you want a monolingual 30,000-headword dictionary for a 12-year-old, you should next have a close look at the nature of the definitions and the words used in the definitions. Do the definitions show cultural, racial or gender bias? My grandmother claimed that she chose a dictionary for its sense of humour, on the basis of its definition of the word eclair. She preferred the one which defined it as “a small cake, long in length and short in duration”.

Check that the words used in the definitions appear as headwords. Good dictionaries ensure that the definitions are easy to understand, and that difficult words in the definition can be looked up in the dictionary. For example, compare these two definitions from dictionaries for 9–10-year-olds:
spider: a very small animal with eight long legs (illustrated)
spider: an eight-legged creature that is an arachnid and that spins webs
Apart from using a sentence that is grammatically complex, the second dictionary doesn’t define either “creature” or “arachnid” as separate headwords.

And, since South Africa follows British, not American, spelling, ensure that the dictionary supports the system of spelling taught in South African schools: “colour” not “color”, “programme” not “program”.

The amount of information
Now look at the amount of information given in each entry. Experts differ on the right age for grammatical information such as “noun”, and for pronunciation, but most would agree that it’s seldom used before the age of 11–13. For older children and adults it’s important, as are the forms and spellings of the past tense and past participle (“eat, ate, eaten” or “budgeted”). Etymology (the origin of the word) is seldom referred to by the average reader, although teachers and word lovers usually howl in protest if it’s left out. For second-language learners, example sentences are often vital reinforcements of the word used in context.

Illustrations
Research has shown that illustrations don’t necessarily help a child acquire vocabulary or understand meaning, although they do add to the visual appeal and “lighten” the text. They are particularly vexed for second-language learners, whose lack of “background” language often leads them to misinterpret what is being labelled in an illustration. For example, in the illustration of the classroom, is that label on the patch of blue window referring to “window”, “glass” or “sky”?

Ease of reading and use
Lastly, look at features such as the legibility of the typeface, the layout of the entries, and appendices such as spelling rules, common abbreviations, weights and measures, foreign phrases, countries of the world, etc., which can be useful additional information.

Dictionary skills
But, having bought a dictionary for your child, your responsibility is not yet over. Your child must be taught how to use it, how to “de-code” it, and to acquire the habit of using it. Most good dictionaries for young users have accompanying workbooks to teach and practise dictionary skills such as alphabetical sequencing (the most basic skill for using a dictionary) and the spelling of difficult words.

The importance of dictionary skills was brought home to me in my early days of teaching English to Afrikaans-speaking pupils. “I went to the sea,” went one 15-year-old’s composition, “I laid on the bitch and vide the waves.” After my howls of laughter had subsided, I realised he’d looked up his third verb in the dictionary, seen “vide” (Latin for “see / refer to”) and assumed that the dictionary instruction to refer to another headword was in fact the word that he’d been looking for.

Encourage children’s use of dictionaries by ensuring that each child has her own suitable one, by having a range of them for the family in the house and by doing crosswords and playing games such as Scrabble that use dictionaries. In this way you’ll be giving your child the gift of a life-long skill which will improve his or her language ability, and, more importantly, provide a source of entrancement through the discovery of the world of words and language.
“I am a Bear of Very Little Brain,” said Pooh, “and long words Bother me.”
Pooh needed an Oxford dictionary.