Over 20 Jewish groups from US and Spanish-speaking countries call on Spain’s linguistic authority to drop two antisemitic definitions from its dictionary
This is an issue that comes up time to time when people learn about something like this. Essentially it boils down to our dictionaries are very different from this. OUR dictionaries are descriptive, THIS dictionary is proscriptive - it is the official list of words in the language. German has one of these, too. Most European languages have Official versions.
This is closer to if the library of congress determined what was and wasn’t an official English word, and what it’s official definition was.
It tries to be prescriptive. If it was actually prescriptive, they wouldn’t invent different words for use in México and Spain that mean the same thing, like betabel and remolacha. In the end, it still needs to describe how people are using the language to actually be useful.
This is an issue that comes up time to time when people learn about something like this. Essentially it boils down to our dictionaries are very different from this. OUR dictionaries are descriptive, THIS dictionary is proscriptive - it is the official list of words in the language. German has one of these, too. Most European languages have Official versions.
This is closer to if the library of congress determined what was and wasn’t an official English word, and what it’s official definition was.
It tries to be prescriptive. If it was actually prescriptive, they wouldn’t invent different words for use in México and Spain that mean the same thing, like betabel and remolacha. In the end, it still needs to describe how people are using the language to actually be useful.