I bought the the app of Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 9th edition, for my iPad last year. I like this dictionary very much and use it everyday. It has many useful features for learning English as a foreign language. That's why it was selected from a lot of competitors.
I had used Longman's online dictionary before I decided to buy the Oxford. That is an equally good dictionary for foreign English learners. Hence I would often look up a word in two dictionaries and compare how they treat it. Yesterday I checked out the word 'afford' and noticed something interesting.
In two sentences with similar meaning:
She felt she couldn't afford any more time off work. (Oxford Learner's)
Dad can't afford any more time off work. (Longman online)
Oxford usd 'she' as the subjecct, and Longman used 'Dad'. Longman's sentence has a 'real person', and hence easier to create associations, with my own personal experience and with the English literature I read before. In another word, Longman's sentence is more 'soulful' and Oxford's sentence is a little too generic.
This difference made me wonder yesterday if that is Oxford's general attitude, that is to use a pronoun as the subject of a sentence. So I looked up more words and the sentences, which demonstrate how they are used.
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary has chosen to adopt a pronoun as the subjects in the majority of sentences. I believe that this is a conscious decision made by the Oxford dictionary team and they must have an editorial philosophy to support it.
Replacing real-life figures with robotic pronouns to a foreign English learner and teacher is like replacing natural landmarks with road signs to a traveler. So if there is one thing I don't like about my Oxford app, this is it.
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