Bingola dictionaries

There are currently five Bingola dictionaries. The full dictionary has 8,700 words. The junior dictionaries are divided into four grades, ranging from 600 words to 2,700 words.

Full dictionary

The full dictionary includes 8,700 commonly used words of all types in English. The dictionary is suitable for both adults, high school students and senior primary school students. The list includes common first names and famous places in Australia and the world.

Each word requires only the 26 letters of the alphabet. There are no apostrophes or hyphens needed.

Most of the words in Bingola are root words, which are simple or unmodified words. Although words in English can be modified to turn nouns into verbs or adjectives into adverbs, most of these words will not appear in the dictionary. This however is more like a guideline. For various practical reasons both a root word and a modified word may appear in the dictionary. Occassionally only the modified word appears.

Vulgar and slang words are excluded from the dictionary. Words that describe serious crimes, diseases, death or traumas are mostly excluded. We try to make sure anyone going through a difficult experience is not directly reminded of that difficulty during the game. If this dictionary was on television, we'd rate the full dictionary as PG, and the graded dictionaries as G.

Spelling

Modern Australian spelling is used, however there are some Old English words that retain their original spelling.

Quite a few words sound exactly the same (homophones) or sound very similar, even though they’re spelt differently. For example, "you" and "ewe" has the same pronounciation, but contain completely different letters. The Bingola word list identifies homophones and near homophones in each wordlist. These words will be spelt out after they are announced.

Binola is not intended as a spelling test. If a player asks for a word to be spelt out, then the caller should prompty do so.

Full dictionary examples

Here is a sample of the 8,700 word regular Bingola dictionary:

Junior dictionaries

The junior dictionaries are suitable for primary school students or any young child who knows the alphabet. The junior dictionary is also suitable for any group where it's useful to avoid complex words.

There are four grades of junior dictionary. They appoximately match grades 1 to 4 of primary or elementary school. Grade 1 is suitable for children who have just learnt the alphabet. If students become familiar with the words in their grade, they may find it suitable to jump up a grade or two.

The dictionaries include up to 2,700 of the most commonly used and easily understood words in Australian English. Unlike the regular dictionary, the graded junior lists do not include first names, places or proper nouns.

Long words are avoided, unless they are especially common to younger children. All words are suitable for children and have no adult themes. If this dictionary was a movie or television program, it would be rated G.

Here is a sample of the Grade 1 Bingola dictionary:

Here is a sample of the Grade 4 Bingola dictionary:

It is not expected that children at a particular grade know the meaning of every word in the dictionary, nor do they need to know how to spell every word. It is the decision of the organiser just how much to challenge each student, by the speed of play and deciding how many words are spelt out.

Ideally, children playing Bingola should feel the game is decided upon their skill in matching, rather than their ability to spell words. Children should be enouraged to speak up and ask questions about the meaning of words and how to spell them.

If you come up against a problem in any dictionary, don't hesitate to let us know. This includes spelling and identifying homophones.