Chinese Dictionary

7 Sep 2010 - The beautiful thing about language is that it evolves. New fashionable Chinese terms, commonly used in online forums, have made it into the language - or at least into the new Oxford Chinese - English English - Chinese dictionary. The book is said to be the largest single volume dictionary of its kind, it contains about 670,000 words and phrases with pronounciation in putonghua. Sixty editors worked on it for six years and there were no political considerations in the decisions on which words would be included. Shanzhai, used to describe China-made imitation products made it into the dictionary, as well as shengnu - used to describe a single woman beyond the usual age for marriage. Other included words that are symbolic for the sign of times are fangnu (mortgage slave), duanbei (homosexuality) and rouduganjun (botox). The dictionary does not include hexie or "river crab", which is widely used in internet forums to ridicule censorship attempts.