421 words for snow

I read a very interesting article the other day about  the compilation of the first Historical Thesaurus of Scots. Academics putting together the tome have discovered that there are 421 Scottish words for snow, in all its multiplicity of forms. For example, 'blin-drift' means drifting snow, while 'flindrikin' means a slight snow shower. This puts the Inuit total of only 50 worlds for snow well and truly in the shade.

In addition to weather, the thesaurus will cover sport. It turns out that there are 369 different Scottish words associated with the playing of marbles, a game that has been extremely popular with Scottish children for generations.

Despite having lived in Scotland for a number of years, I am not familiar with any of the words connected with snow or marbles that were quoted in the article. I guess this is because I am not a native Scot and because neither snow nor marbles featured high on my agenda during my time living in the country.

But this got me thinking about how easy it would be to invent words that don't exist and, if enough people were prepared to take part in the mass deception, convince others (non-natives) that these words were legitimate and had been around forever. If you did that, I imagine that people might actually start using those made-up words and, voilà, they would enter the language for real.

And that is exactly how vocabulary does--or can--develop. Not the mass deception bit, of course, but someone starting to use a new word or an old word in a new way, others following suit and, before you know it, that word becoming ubiquitous.

An interesting article, as I said...

The changing meaning of the verb 'to revert'

I do a lot of work for the publishing industry. My husband works in the IT industry. Between us, we have plenty of experience working with Indian colleagues. And the one thing that we both really notice is the phenomenon of Indian English,

There are certain phrases that are used regularly in Indian English but are not correct, at least traditionally, in British English. One of our favourites is the word 'revert'. In Indian English the phrase: 'Please revert to me' is commonplace. This is used to mean 'please refer to me', as in 'if you have any questions, please refer to me'. Or, in Indian English, 'if you have any questions, please revert to me'. Although we understand perfectly well what is meant by the phrase in Indian English, it is a non-starter in British English. In British English, 'please revert to me' would mean 'please turn back into me' -- which makes no sense at all!

What's interesting, though, is that this phrase now appears to be entering British English and, increasingly, is being used between speakers of British English. Only the other day, I received an email from a journalist saying '...I will revert to you or to Kate, depending on your instructions'.

The phrase 'to revert' in the sense of 'to refer' already appears in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, albeit under the category of Indian English. My guess is that it won't be long before it appears in other more pedestrian dictionaries of British English as well.

The decline of literacy

Interesting incident on the way in to work today. I had the misfortune to be walking in just before nine. Misfortune because all the students are making their way to their first lectures of the day at this time and they literally take over. Fill up the entire pavement by walking in large groups. Whizz along the road on bikes, skipping red lights and almost causing accidents left, right and centre.

Anyway, I was walking along next to one such large group when one of the young men piped up with ‘What does “panache” mean?...Only I want to be able to describe myself that way.' Sounds a bit risky, if you ask me, wanting to describe yourself with a word for which you don’t know the meaning. But the really interesting thing was that not one of his colleagues was able to answer his question. I helpfully obliged, which was met with thanks and comments along the lines of ‘Oh, so that’s what it means!’, rolled around on the tongue as if discovering a new and interesting vintage.

Now, this was a group of Oxford University students. It is natural to assume that such people will be bright, be educated and, quite frankly, know the meaning of a word such as ‘panache’. I could settle for one student in the group not knowing the meaning—but all of them? Come on!

And it’s not the first time that I’ve come across this kind of deficit. I work with a group of Oxbridge-educated postdocs who frequently don’t seem to know the meaning of words that I would consider commonplace. They also seem to lack the ability to spell.

So why is this? Is it that these people are scientists and so don’t have a bent for language? Language is my first love and I read and write all the time, so it makes sense that I have a wide vocabulary and know how to spell. Or is it an age thing? Perhaps young people aren’t taught English in the way that I was back in the 70s and 80s. Yet both my children are good writers, can spell, and seem to me to have large vocabularies (they are both voracious readers). Or maybe it’s genetic—my father was a writer, I am a writer, and my children appear to be following the family tradition.

Call me old fashioned (and, believe me, I often feel old fashioned when writing my blog articles!), but I think that the whole language package (writing, spelling, words) is undervalued and has become increasingly undervalued in the years since I was a child. You only have to look at the UK higher education landscape these days to realise that the areas most strongly supported and funded are the sciences (particularly those perceived as leading to human health benefits) and vocational subjects. Education no longer appears to be valued for its own sake, which means that the humanities in general are being systematically eroded. And it tends to be in the humanities that language—the ability to communicate, to express oneself well in writing, to be vividly descriptive as well as analytic—really thrives.

Yet, in my opinion, education should be about something more than a narrow-minded learning of one’s subject—whether that subject is scientific, artistic or vocational. It should be about awareness of the wider world, having an appreciation of culture and literature, and—yes—being able to write, spell, and use words correctly.