'We need to know what the slang word means'
Royal Institute officials with a “Dictionary of New Thai Words”, to be published this year, at a press conference yesterday.
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The Royal Institute yesterday defended its decision to include slang words and to recognise the connotations of some widely used words.
"Without their inclusion, people in the next 30 or 40 years may not understand these words when coming across them in texts," Kanchana Naksakul said in her capacity as chairperson of the committee to compile a contemporary Thai dictionary. "The Dictionary of New Thai Words from the Royal Institute" will be published later this year. One of the institute's main objectives is to undertake and encourage research in every branch of knowledge beneficial to the nation and the people. Recently, reports that it had listed words like "chill chill" (which means "take it easy") in the dictionary attracted criticism that it was going to recognise informal words. "A dictionary is meant to list words in alphabetical order so that people can conveniently use them as references," explained Kanchana, who is also a member of the institute. She added that the current edition of the dictionary contained about 400 slang words. Institute chairman Chaianan Samudvanija said the dictionary would be a milestone in the dictionary-making world because it recognised slang used by teenagers. Mayuree Sukyingcharoenwong The Nation
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