LONDON - Indian Mahaveer
Jain has made the record books by memorizing the entire
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary verbatim. Jain not
only remembers each of the 80,000 individual entries but
is also able to recollect their sequence and page
numbers with pinpoint accuracy.
The youngster's
feat has earned him a place in the Limca Book of
Records, India's version of the Guinness Book of World
Records.
It is reported that the engineering
graduate memorized the entire book in just 10 months by
adopting scientific learning techniques perfected by his
teacher Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury, a national memory
record holder.
He said, "While not everybody can
perfect the art to the extent Biswaroop or I have, they
should be able to achieve a lot through proper
training."
Jain, popularly called "Dictionary
Man", runs the Dynamic Memory Center in the northern
city of Lucknow.
The Oxford Advanced Learner's
Dictionary is published by world-famous language experts
Oxford University Press. The original edition of the
dictionary, published over 50 years ago, was the first
major dictionary to be compiled specifically to support
learners of English, with clear explanations of the
meaning of words - and how they are used.
The
worldwide success of the Oxford Advanced Learner's
Dictionary has made it a target for illegal copying and
pirated copies. But Oxford has no need to worry this
time - in fact, Moira Runcie, editorial director for ELT
Dictionaries at Oxford University Press, has only praise
for this walking, talking version of Oxford's most
famous dictionary for learners.
"It's an
incredible achievement. Our editors are constantly
revising and re-editing the Oxford Advanced Learner's
dictionary to keep it up to date. Amazing as it seems,
Mr Jain probably knows the dictionary even better than
an Oxford editor!"
