For the first time, new words such as "sand storm," "Internet geek" and "Internet cafe" can be found in China's most authoritative Chinese language dictionary.

A symposium, held by the Commercial Press yesterday, attracted a dozen experts in medicine, architecture, information technology and linguistics to exchange ideas about the newly published 2001 version of the third revised Xinhua Dictionary (Xinhua Cidian) .

Compiling the Xinhua Dictionary was supported by late Premier Zhou Enlai in 1971 with an aim to offering an authoritative reference on the Chinese language.

It has enjoyed an accumulative circulation of more than 7 million since 1980.

Consistent with its original style of offering readers precise, simple and understandable explanations of Chinese phrases and terms, the newly compiled dictionary adds more than 8,000 terms that have become popular in recent years.

Society's absorption of new words is evidence of rapid social and lifestyle changes, according to experts.

Four years ago, China had only 620,000 Internet users, making it unlikely that a common citizen would understand the term "Internet cafe." But when the country's Internet users numbered 22.5 million by 2000, the word wang (network) soon became a prefix in Chinese.

This trend is reflected in the new dictionary's inclusion of terms such as "network card", "IP telephone", "cyber-economy" and "netizen."

Other words popular to the Chinese are also included, such as "digital TV," "greenhouse effect," "cruise missile," "eco-environment," "e-business," "download," "desertification" and "mobile phone."

"The new version has added 200 new architectural terms to meet users' demands," said Professor Zhu Zixuan from School of Architecture, Tsinghua University.

"Knowing some of the architectural phrases - such as lightening rod, main wall and height of the room - will benefit readers and help make their lives easier and safer," said Xu Yifang, a Phd student in architecture at South China University of Technology.

For example the Ministry of Construction has ruled that the "height of a room" should be at least 2.4 meters because lower spaces will affect residents' health and lives.

But, to cut construction cost, some houses are built with rooms only 2 meters in height.

"The acknowledgement of such terms will help people to protect their rights," said Xu.

However, to maintain the serious, formal and scientific style of the dictionary, some words are ignored despite their frequent usage. For example, the word ku, meaning "being cool," though popularly used, was excluded from the dictionary.

(China Daily 08/01/2001)