Coming up on Word Matters, the Learner's Dictionary.
I'm Emily Brewster,
and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Neil Servin, Amin Shea, Peter Sokolowski,
and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
Upon hearing the term Learner's Dictionary, one might be inclined to wonder,
wouldn't every dictionary be a Learner's Dictionary?
Surely no one knows all the words?
And while there's truth to that, today we're talking about a specialized lexicon.
Merriam-Webster's Advanced Learner's English Dictionary is written specifically for people coming to English from another language.
Here's Peter Sakalowski with the story of how this book and its free-on-the-internet sister version came to be.
We have talked before and mentioned that there is sort of no such thing as the dictionary.
Because there are so many different dictionaries,
but not only so many different dictionary publishers,
but also different kinds of dictionaries for different functions.
And I think that's something... that a lot of people don't ever think about.
And I understand why.
We'd like today to talk about a very special kind of dictionary that we worked on at Merriam-Webster,
which is known in English as a learner's dictionary.
A dictionary written for... people who did not learn English by speaking it at home,