Well I can tell you this much, given another month or so, my usage of ‘dandelion’ as in “Them feckin’ dandelions are a pain in the arse!” will far outweigh my usage of IT techie terms, that at best, I have only a tenuous grasp of.
Vic
This vocabulary filleting is very sad. In a review today of Macfarlane’s newly published book Landmarks, the reviewer draws attention to other regional English words that Macfarlane lists which are already marginal: “clegsum” (heavy, wet Suffolk land), “stenloppm” (the bruise that Shetland rock will give you if you misjudge a jump) and “diddering” (what an East Anglian bog does when you walk on it). I particularly like clegsum, and diddering - which sounds like the way in which I walk back from the pub, of a summer evening. (I write as someone proud long ago to have got the Geordie word “plodge”, meaning to walk through mud or water, into a newspaper article about an FA Cup Final.)
I’ve just finished reading Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, the subject of Macfalane’s bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 … ms-journey It’s the most sensuous book I’ve read. Sensual, even It has a terrific glossary of about 300 words. e.g., bog-jaaveled ‘completely at a loss’.
Landmarks wings it way hither as we speak (so to speak). As does Nan Shepherd’s Grampian Quartet.
Yet another example how computers are killing the next generations.
But then I start to wonder if the high adoption rate is related to (sub)urbanization more than technology. As kids become isolated by mediocre distances and we scream about safety do we drive them away from the things that we old curmudgeons saw as anchors of our childhood? Can a kid who isn’t allowed to walk in a wooded lot next to his house ever understand the glories of a bird migration at 6AM*?
I wonder if we have done this to ourselves?
*[size=60]I mention this because we are in the midst of the northerly migration here. The robins (thrushes for you UKers) have moved through by the hundreds. The Blue birds (robins to you UKers) are as thick as house sparrows. Cardinals and Blue Jays defend their territory in full mating plumage. Pileated, red belly, read head and downy wood peckers are reducing trees to mulch. And then there are the shore birds and wading birds. The roosting colony of ibis and herons are back. Sand pipers, wood ducks, mallards, and on and on I can go. Just to say … my son is awed by the sight of so many vibrantly colored birds seen as he waits for the bus to drag him to school.[/size]
I can’t say I particularly care that these words have been swapped out; frankly the replacements seem far more appropriate than an encyclopaedic list of birds and plants (blockgraph being the exception, whatever that is). What does concern me is: what the figgle is a “junior dictionary”? What the higgle is wrong with giving your children access to a normal dictionary? How do you expect kids to be interested in looking up words if the so-called adult words have been removed? That’s what dictionaries are for when you’re i[/i]eight!
I’ve just looked up “block-graph” (also “bottom”, but that’s another story). It’s some new-tangled dumbed down version of a bar chart because apparently we’re convinced that our children are figgling stupid?!
edit: I’ve flipped that thing a few time. I have no idea why it’s insisting on rendering upside down. Maybe a smart person can fix it. In my defense —>
I was going to comment on the lovely little gecko-like 'gator, BUT THEN REALISED THAT THE RETIRED HAW OUT-TECHED MY TECH GURU WITHOUT BREAKING A SWEAT!
My world has turned more upside down than Jaysen’s photo (which, when looked at from down-under, was the right way up until it crossed the equator*). I don’t know who to trust anymore…
[size=85]apparently, the equilibrium equalator effect* even applies to emails. They do still have that in your dictionary* don’t they? Or has the northern hemisphere completely forgotten about the equator’s equilibrium equalator effect in this modern era of jet planes and emails?
***Who says I can’t stay on topic? [/size]
I have lived in Suffolk (hence East Anglia) since 1987 and I have never heard these words! Mind you, it’s mostly sandy heath round here, so maybe it’s a micro-regional thing. I am going to fit “clegsum” into conversation this very day. Brilliant word.
Off-topic. One of my favourite jokes:
Q: What is jargon?
A: It’s what Norfolk people do to get fit.
(You need to know the local/regional accent, for this to work.)
Taken from Macfalane’s Landmarks, [size=85]p229:[/size] roarie-bummlers This isn’t a description of folk cursed with chronic/sonically enhanced flatulence, but:
See, I’m not sure about this. rad it out loud and it make absolute sense. Kind of like all the colloquial writers. Heck, when you get right down too it, reading out loud is almost required to understand anything written prior to 1900 by a non-scholor. People back then make my spelling seem reasonable.
And a very nice article by Robert Macfarlane.
It has a terrific glossary of about 300 words. e.g., 
<— sounds as bad as the Trossacks
Hellish!![/size]
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