Beijing, July 22 (ANI): Rights campaigners in China have objected to the exclusion of the word "gay" from a newly published edition of one of the country's most authoritative dictionaries.
According to The BBC, campaigners said that it has excluded a definition widely used by homosexuals in China for 'gay'.
The word, 'Tongzhi', whose primary meaning is 'comrade', a form of address beloved of Communists for decades.
One of the compilers said they did not want to draw attention to its more colloquial meaning.
The newly revised sixth edition of the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary includes Internet slang such as "Geili" - meaning awesome - and such non-Chinese expressions as PM2.5, which refers to a pollution indicator for particulate matter.
But "Tongzhi", in colloquial Chinese the equivalent of "gay" as in "homosexual", has been exculded.
Linguist Jiang Lansheng, one of the compilers of the dictionary, said: "We knew about the usage but we can't include it."
Some gay rights campaigners in the country said that the move was bizarre, saying it was unacceptable that the "gay" meaning of "Tongzhi" was excluded from the dictionary just because of the compilers' own preferences and values. (ANI)
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