#026 LEXICAL DIVIDE

Period of time : 1955 to 1966.
Place on the globe : 16 degrees N of equator and 82 degrees E of Greenwich.

We come often across the term known as ' digital divide ' . This refers to the gulf between those blessed fortunate sections which have access to computers and internet and those cursed and unfortunate who do not have access to the computers and internet.

My boyhood experienced ' lexical divide ' . I had no access to a dictionary. I could not buy an English dictionary till I entered the XI Standard , owing to abject poverty.
1966:
The first dictionary, I bought was , a 1942 Edition of the Merrium Websters Dictionary. It contained , apart from definitions , synonyms and antonyms. It had an appendix containing the list of the American Cities and their population. I bought the dictionary on a pavement at a throwaway price affordable by me. It was full of termites and what not?

The first thing I did after acquiring the dictionany was to compare the population of the American Cities with the population of comparable Indian cities. E.g. Washington with New Delhi and New York with Bombay.

I, at present, when offline , use the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. I have suggested this dictionary to some of my friends , but they feel that they cannot invest a tidy amount on it. The dictionary is definitely expensive for the lower strata of the Indian society like us .