Monday, November 27, 2017

Are My Words Wasted?

They're disappearing...

Acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin, conker, cowslip, cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heather, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, mistletoe, nectar, newt, otter, pasture, willow...

The Oxford Junior Dictionary no longer includes these words, saying they're irrelevant to modern day childhood.  I know what every one of these words means, but didn't always.  I discovered them one at a time, wondering what a flower was and looking it up, or reading an article that mentioned one or more of these words.  Mostly, I learned these words from fantasy novels, where "bluebells" were death's knell, seven "cowslips" in hand let you see fairies, Leda was transformed into a swan and bore "cygnets"...  These words represent more than metaphor and fantasy.  We cannot advocate for what we cannot name.

It was literally decades before I knew a certain flower that appeared like magic was called a bluet.  I called them "serendipities", learning the word from another fantasy story.  When the words go away, so does the knowledge.  Why should we care about "catkins" on willows when we walk by them, looking at our phones?  Why will "acorns" matter to us, as we see a squirrel run away with its nut.  (Some even call it a pine cone and can't identify the oak tree it comes from.  Do they know they are edible with the proper preparation?  Do they know to look for acorn weevils?)

Instead, they can look up "attachment" as they add a picture to their "blog", hoping for "celebrity" as their thoughts go out on "broadband" and into "chatrooms".  Maybe they'll list "bullet-points", as whole sentences become too tedious.  Then everything is "cut-and-paste" and decided by a  "committee" who probably haven't been outside in a long, long time, too busy listening to "MP3 players" and "voice-mail" to listen to nature.

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