Free Rice
I found this awesome site in the summer sometime. It's supposed to give grains of rice to people who can't aford it, and it also teaches you stuff. The version I like the best is the English learning bit. It starts out with easy words, like "solitude" and asks to click on a synomym. If you get it right (and it tells you what the right answer is/if you get it right) the next time it gives you a slightly harder word. You can change the level of words all the way up to level 60, which has words like capitulum.
Also, you can change the subject to math, french (which is helpful the the french-extrended student here - which is half-way between french immersion (totally bilingual) and core (normal)) and stuff like that. It's really cool, and if it works and they're not just lying to you, it gives rice to people in need, which is great as well.
Words, Un-Worded
In my class, we have something called "What in the World". It's were you bring in a newspaper article, about anything, submit a report on it, and talk to the class about the article. For mine, I did this really cool and exceptionall nerdy article: Collin's Dictionary Un-Wording Words.
This is the summary I wrote for fun, and as a guideline as to what to say to my class. The more formal version will be following, as suckish and written-the-night-before as it is.
Collins Dictionary Un-Wording Words
The article I chose is about the dictionary Collins is trying to make some words go linguistically extinct - which, by the way, is not a word I use at all - ever - but maybe I should start, because some really weirdly interesting words are about to go extinct because Collins doesn’t think their used enough for their dictionary. They are still words!
Well, the article goes on and says that they have compiled (another word that is luckily not on there) a list of 25 words that they think should go extinct. Of course, some people are getting really upset about this, like the poet Andrew Motion, who has officially adopted the word “skirr” after finding out it was endangered and is trying to get people to use the word more often. “Skirr” means a whirring sound, like the wings of a bird - which is how Andrew used it in one of his poems. Other word-using people are also adopting words and trying to save them from becoming extinct.
I liked this article and think it was important because if one dictionary can get away with killing off one of their words, than the others will follow and then we’ll have nothing in dictionaries but words we always use - and dictionaries are for finding weird words that you didn’t know about. So what if their long and hard to say - but half the words that they have on their list aren’t even that weird. I mean, the word embrangle? It was winning for the word the most people want to save, and means to tangle. It’s important, because when you think of tangle, than you, or at least I, think about hair or tape or something. Embrangle kind of has more of an outdoorsy-feel, maybe a tangle of green twigs could be an embrangle.
Also, I think that some of the words Collins has chosen are completely wrong. Skirr at least looks human, and if you randomly look at any word-of-the-day on dictionary.com sites, than you find words are look like they’re from Saturn - like catafalque, which means some sort of decoration on a coffin. Maybe I haven’t been to enough funerals, but I haven’t ever heard anyone call anything a catafalque - it isn’t pronounceable or spellable.
So, overall, I think that dictionaries are for finding words like skirr, maybe even catafalque if it’s a big dictionary, but it’s actually a little sad to figure out that skirr isn’t even recognized on Word’s spellchecker - because it’s my word of the day.
Okay, here's the icky formal one. It's bad, I know.
Collins Dictionary Un-Wording Words
Imagine looking in the dictionary, flipping through the few pages it has and never finding that word you were looking for. The horrible thing is, that could actually happen sometime in the future - if dictionaries start to cut books from their pages, and therefore make the word go extinct.
The article that caught my eye and that I decided to do my “What In The World” on was called “Collins To Remove Obscure Words From Dictionary”. It was by Rebecca Tucker and summarized the decision Collins Dictionary was going through; whether to delete a list of twenty-five words from their upcoming dictionary, or not. The article didn’t list the words, so I looked around on other sites for another article - and found one. This one was called “How You Can Help Save Some Cherished Words From Oblivion”. It explained the same idea, but of a slightly different case; saving the words. Collins has decided that if the words were still used in the papers and internet (not including the articles about Collins and the endangered words themselves) they would include the words in their dictionary. Good thing for me, at the bottom of the article there was a list of the twenty-five words. Also, this web-article has an online poll for which word you would save - embrangle was winning. Embrangle is the word I voted for on that site, and means to confuse or tangle. I think that “embrangle” is more outdoorsy than “tangle”, and would actually be useful.
Actually, a lot of the world would be useful. Some of the words that stood out to me are “skirr” which means a whirring sound like a bird’s wings, “malison” a curse - and it sounds curse-like - and “calignosity” which means dimness or darkness even if the “calig” part makes you think of calligraphy, which makes you think of light/white. I could totally use these words - especially when I need to write more formally (even though I’m already having to do that, but more formally). Also, I like these words. Words are awesome and great inventions, and none of them should ever be forgotten.
Overall, any weird word is still a word, with consonants and vowels, and deserves it’s place in the dictionary. If one dictionary can get away with cutting out these tools of writing, more dictionaries will follow, destroying more precious words. What would a world be without words? Some people have already reached that, and decided that the wordless world would be disastrous. Those people have decided to endorse these poor words and save them. All of the words need to be saved. A world just cant be a world without every one of them.
I know that's not half as formal as it should have been, but it was late at night and I was tired. So it passed the Sarah-Check. I can write more formal stuff, but not when I'm not in the mood. Yeah, my writing is all moods. But no fears, this blog is over. I would add more.. but I think this is enough. I'll find more wordy-related stuff for later.
P.S. my Word Origin of the day is: Nerd. Which was invented by Dr Suess to be a wierd looking creature. Go nerds!
No comments:
Post a Comment