{"id":818,"date":"2010-07-27T15:09:12","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T15:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=818"},"modified":"2014-11-11T20:48:03","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T20:48:03","slug":"enid-blyton-books-get-a-makeover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/27\/enid-blyton-books-get-a-makeover\/","title":{"rendered":"Enid Blyton books get a makeover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Classic children\u2019s books by author <a href=\"http:\/\/www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk\/a-biography-of-enid-blyton.php\">Enid Blyton<\/a> are getting a linguistic makeover to appeal to the new generation, according to a report at <a href=\"http:\/\/thebookseller.com\/\">thebookseller.com<\/a> Whilst the publisher of the <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Famous_Five_%28series%29\">Famous Five<\/a><\/em> series puts annual sales at over half a million, research has shown that parents are put off buying their children these books because of the \u2018dated\u2019 language.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Hodder said that the changes will affect the dialogue in the stories with the narrative left &#8220;largely untouched&#8221;. Publishing director Anne McNeil said: &#8220;Very subtle changes have been made to remove the barriers that stood between readers and the story.&#8221; In the original text, for example, Dick says: &#8220;She must be jolly lonely all by herself&#8221; which has been updated to read: &#8220;She must get lonely all by herself.&#8221; &#8220;Mother and father&#8221; become &#8220;mum and dad&#8221; and &#8220;school tunic&#8221; becomes \u2018uniform&#8217;.&#8221; McNeil said that the changes were not intended to make the Famous Five books &#8220;modern&#8221; but to place them in a &#8220;timeless&#8221; age. She said: &#8220;We have not introduced any slang or colloquial language that would place the characters in today&#8217;s world.&#8221; (Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thebookseller.com\/news\/124096-enid-blyton-lingo-gets-an-update.html \">The Bookseller.com<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Although this is not the first time the books have been updated, the move has still provoked anger from the public. Personally, I think the update is taking away some of the character of the books. I read them as a child in the eighties and nineties, and they were pleasant escapism \u2013 the language used did not affect my enjoyment of the story. What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Classic children\u2019s books by author Enid Blyton are getting a linguistic makeover to appeal to the new generation, according to a report at thebookseller.com Whilst the publisher of the Famous Five series puts annual sales at over half a million, research has shown that parents are put off buying their children these books because of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,3,44],"tags":[809,810,812,51,811,108,44],"class_list":["post-818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-english","category-words","tag-enid-blyton","tag-enid-blyton-books","tag-famous-five","tag-language","tag-language-change","tag-linguistics","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2502,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions\/2502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}