We’ve been around the world and in and out of contexts in our search to understand and share what English is in the world, right now. The What’s Your English? 2010 campaign explored English usage in countries from Australia to Japan to Brazil. The 2011 campaign looked at English usage in different contexts: business English, metaphorical English, gender English, small talk and much, much more. In 2012 we focused on English in 3 different categories for our 3 different kinds of readers: English language learners & teachers; those of you who use English out of necessity (in work, to travel, online) and our language lovers (linguists, lexicographers, logophiles). In 2013 we added a fourth category: PLAY and we continue to grow this area of the dictionary adding games for our different categories of readers to enjoy.
And now, having listened to, analysed and offered opinion on English as it is actually used at the moment, everywhere, we’re bringing it all together in one place. No more divisions, clearly you don’t need them. The way we keep in touch with you is through our social media pages on Twitter and Facebook. If you follow us on Facebook you’ll see that the three Facebook pages have merged to form one ‘MacDictionary‘ page. On Twitter we ask you to follow @MacDictionary as the @MacLiveEnglish and @MacLearnEnglish pages will be removed at the end of the month.
Here at Macmillan Dictionary Online we are really excited to be introducing our Real Grammar series at the same time as merging our different user pages into one – #realgrammar is about acknowledging that English is an ever-changing language and that it is owned by the people who use it all over the world every day. Our job is to record it, to make sense of it and also to give you the confidence to use it in the face of bullying prescriptivism and unnecessary pedantry.
We love the English language and we are enjoying every minute of this journey with you!
As the wonderful Dizraeli wrote for us in his 20th Century Flux:
…Language is the people that live it. Get loose, give it some vision and foresight
and juice; we can fling the dictionary door wide …
