Friday, March 6, 2015

Losing the natural world.


Please have a look at this Guardian recent article on losing our capacity to describe the natural world:


The same summer I was on Lewis, a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionarywas published. A sharp-eyed reader noticed that there had been a culling of words concerning nature. Under pressure, Oxford University Press revealed a list of the entries it no longer felt to be relevant to a modern-day childhood. The deletions included acornadderashbeechbluebellbuttercupcatkinconkercowslipcygnetdandelionfernhazelheatherheronivykingfisherlarkmistletoenectarnewtotterpasture and willow. The words taking their places in the new edition included attachmentblock-graphblogbroadbandbullet-pointcelebritychatroomcommitteecut-and-pasteMP3 player and voice-mail. As I had been entranced by the language preserved in the prose‑poem of the “Peat Glossary”, so I was dismayed by the language that had fallen (been pushed) from the dictionary. For blackberry, read Blackberry.  --- Robert Macfarlane

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/27/robert-macfarlane-word-hoard-rewilding-landscape?CMP=share_btn_fb