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Oxford University Press Children’s is set to launch into Cornish language publishing with the Oxford Children’s Cornish–English Visual Dictionary, one in a new series of bilingual dictionaries for children aged eight-plus.
The dictionaries, to be published on 6th June (£9.99, paperback), take a themed approach to helping children with vocabulary, offering words grouped in concepts like “people and homes”, “food and clothing” and “school and work”.
The range covers the major European languages, but also Celtic languages including Cornish, Irish, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic. The dictionaries are being published simultaneously in languages including Slovak, Romanian, Amharic (for Ethiopia), Indonesian and Arabic.
Children’s dictionaries publisher Vineeta Gupta said: “Cornish speakers are more in the hundreds than thousands but they have been growing in recent years. Cornish has been undergoing a revival . . . increasingly children are exposed to the language, street signs are often bilingual and nurseries, primary and secondary schools are offering Cornish-language classes. Part of our mission of language scholarship is doing publishing nobody else will do . . . It’s the first time we’ve done it and we’ll see how it goes.”
The visual dictionaries will have fresh, engaging artwork and deal with themes children can relate to. The titles will be unlike anything else in the market, Gupta said.
The bilingual visual dictionaries have been created with the help of language consultants, teachers and linguists, as well as customers around the world.