There used to be a word for it

[boatman]

Reposted from Facebook because I think this very important:

From Woodlandfor sale.co.uk a report of what I consider treachery by the publishers of the Oxford Junior Dictionary. How dare they remove the words of our country that should be the common inheritance of our children? Apart from its absurdity isn't it for a dictionary to supply definitions of words that might (repeat might) have less currency which is why someone might look them up in a dictionary.
"According to the new “Landmarks” book, the Oxford Junior dictionary recently removed some words which the editor considered less relevant to today’s young people. These exclusions included: acorn, ash, beech, bluebell, hazel, ivy, fern, lark, mistletoe, newt and otter. Such words had to be removed to make space for these more relevant words, amongst others: blog, chatroom, MP3player, broadband, attachment and voice-mail. This change, which is said by the editor to reflect the reality of modern-day children’s urban lives, is alarming in its acceptance that children might no longer “see the seasons, or that the rural environment might be so unproblematically disposable.”"

 

[bigbear]

That is a disgrace.

 

[Hammock_man]

However I suspect its a fact that there are more children reading/writing blogs than there are have their own Tarp! There is only a finite amount of room in the dictionary, bearing in mind that this is a scaled down version. While there may be blame to attach somewhere, don't think its the dictionaries fault.

 

[Disco1]

Totally agree with you boatman its a disgrace.

 

[GGTBod]

Give it a decade and it will be half full with textspeak and pointless acronyms

 

[Mesquite]

Give it a decade and it will be half full with textspeak and pointless acronyms

That's because most youth of today write and spell as if they're texting etc.

I personally hate text speak as well as wraccents. I consider it to be lazy and an abuse of the wonderful thing that is the English language

 

[crosslandkelly]

But would Shakespear understand us today? The English language has always been evolving. That said, it is not the dictionaries job to just remove words.

 

[mountainm]

That's because most youth of today write and spell as if they're texting etc.

I personally hate text speak as well as wraccents. I consider it to be lazy and an abuse of the wonderful thing that is the English language

Do they? Or are we being prejudice.... Teens always get a raw deal, no matter the generation.

 

[GGTBod]

I personally hate text speak as well as wraccents. I consider it to be lazy and an abuse of the wonderful thing that is the English language

I'm totally in the same boat, i don't even know what a wraccent is, Google-fu failed me in my attempt to self educate, what the hell is a wraccent?

 

[mountainm]

That's because most youth of today write and spell as if they're texting etc.

I personally hate text speak as well as wraccents. I consider it to be lazy and an abuse of the wonderful thing that is the English language

.

You missed a full stop there. Y'know. - Glass houses...

 

[Goatboy]

Having to resist terribly to talk about the word "gullible" being removed from the dictionary.

While I agree and think it's sad that words go out of favour I just need to look through some of my old books to see many words that the average person in the street wouldn't have a clue about. Some are colourful and descriptive, others are very much of their time and sadly some just are no longer relevant. Even worse when the dictionary gets it wrong. I recently picked up on a mistake about horse chestnuts in a dictionary I have in electronic form. I've emailed them but haven't heard back yet. I had no problem reading the likes of Shakespeare at school without having to refer to notes due to the nature and age of the work. But few others could. English teacher friends say that now that would be pretty unheard of as language has changed so much.
Sadly if we don't use it we loose it.

 

[boatman]

Apologies for going on but I think it important.

Never seen any problem with Shakespeare's language. A language that hasn't changed very much except for some words but what is wrong with asking children to apply themselves? Even so-called Middle-English isn't that different if you allow for spelling changes. What is known as Anglo-Saxon is mainly intelligible with a bit of patience and again allowing for spelling and vocabulary. It is possible that Courtly Anglo-Saxon was a foreign import overlaying a native English that reasserted itself after the Norman Conquest. For example, Alfred requiring the Thegnly class to become literate might have been more that they were lapsing into the vernacular English rather than that of the elite.

One of the problems, as I see it, is the work of teachers and historical linguists. How many teachers, for example, will recite Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales in a normal accent rather than some strangled Midlandshire voice?

 

[Mesquite]

I'm totally in the same boat, i don't even know what a wraccent is, Google-fu failed me in my attempt to self educate, what the hell is a wraccent?

A wraccent is when someone uses local dialect words or spells them to make what they type sound as they speak. Written accent in other words.

 

[Goatboy]

Although I dislike text speak and do like standardised spelling I do like to slip into some colloquialisms with folk of a similar ilk sometimes. And as it's often with someone from the east coast of Scotland where the Doric and older tongues come together it's actually probably a lot nearer Middle-English than a lot of modern dialects. And to be brutally honest what we term as English has its main tap root firmly ensconced in Frisian. The native tongue (if you can call it that) of the folk there before was most probably some form of Welsh.

So where the Grocers Apostrophe, spelling, and loss of words does annoy me I understand that English though a beautiful thing is highly mutable. In some ways it's standardised by media like television which can scrub away accents, in others it's becoming more diverse through regional variations of vowel shift which are making some parts of the US almost unintelligible to each other.

 

[GGTBod]

Thanks for explaining wraccents, sometimes that bugs me but at other times i find it fits purpose and adds context and character to the text, for example when i read the novels of Irving Welsh or my Our Willie comics as a kid

 

[Goatboy]

Sometimes that bugs me but at other times i find it fits purpose and adds context and character to the text, for example when i read the novels of Irving Welsh or my Our Willie comics as a kid

Or "VIZ" like!

 

[GGTBod]

Too right if Viz was not wraccented in Geordie it would not have gotten past issue 1, i forgot Viz to me reading it was like talking to a fellow local

 

[bilmo-p5]

Tha' knows.

 

[cranmere]

That's sad.

 

[boatman]

Frisian and English are more likely cousins. In some respects they are so close that it seems odd for this to be so if they have been developing in different directions since the 500 ADs or so. But if the reality is that language does not change as much as is traditionally taught then:
"Rye bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Fries.", not very different from "Brea, bûter en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk."