the Listener isn't gobby!

My son greeted me when he got home today with 'Mum, you have to tell me what these words mean!' He had been reading an article in the Listener, and had come across the following words which he didn't recognise. He is a uni student and was a bit shocked that he didn't know some of the vocabulary.

The words he got stuck on were

• opprobrium
• pomeranium
• whole furore
• Orpington hens
• gobby dilettante

Most of them he had been able to guess from the context but opprobrium we had to look up in a dictionary just to check that we were right. Two other words that my son commented on were 'histrionics' and 'bilge'. He said that he really liked those words. I asked him how come he knew the meaning of those two words but not some of the others - he said 'I guess I just absorbed those words somewhere along the line'.

And the word that I didn't know of them all? 'Gobby'- which is a slang word meaning loud-mouthed and offensive. So that's my new vocab for this week, courtesy of the Listener.

NB. The 'Listener' is a NZ magazine that comes out every week. As well as having feature articles and regular columnists, it lists all the TV and radio programmes available in NZ for each week.

Non-words

Do you know the meaning of any of the words below?

pocock
bance
contortal
glandle
stace

I would be surprised if you do! They are all non-words - created to be used in vocab tests with students to see if they recognise 'real' words from words that are plausible non-words ie. they LOOK like words but don't have any meaning. Feel free to add any words that YOU have made up that sound like an English word, but aren't real at all!

Size of your vocabulary

Test Your Vocabulary I received this link in a recent email. It is a site intended to measure the vocab of both native and non-native English speakers. You tick the words that you know from a selection and at the end of the test it gives you an approximate total of the number of words you know in English. My result was between 30-40 thousand words... which is quite a lot of vocabulary! It's a very general test as it doesn't actually test your knowledge, but relies on you identifying which words you don't actually know!

The blog that talks about the test has some interesting facts and figures about vocab sizes generally - an excerpt below.

We've made two discoveries so far. The first is that, for native speakers age 18+, most people (74%) have a vocabulary size between 20,000 and 35,000 (13% below, and 13% above). Of course, this is for the specific subset of people who are Internet users and have taken our test so far.

Our second discovery is much more interesting, a statistic we haven't come across anywhere before. We calculated average vocabulary sizes for native English speakers for ages 15–32, which is the range of ages for which we have at least 100 respondents per year of birth, and discovered there is a remarkably linear progression from 23,303 words (age 15) to 29,330 words (age 32), which works out to an average increase of 355 words per year, or almost exactly one new word a day (0.97 words to be precise).

What I find intriguing is that my age and the total I got tally with their suggestion that I am learning about one new word a day!

newbie and other words with ie endings

I came across the word 'bestie' for the first time the other day. It was used on a Facebook posting of a picture of my daughter and one of her very close friends and underneath someone had added the caption 'Besties' ie. best friends.

We seem to have a habit of doing this in NZ. We start off when the kiddies are quite little by getting them to eat veggies, bickies and chippies. Then they grow up and become chippies, sparkies or posties. What other words can you think of that we shorten with an 'ie' ending?

Wassup? It's official

Well, wassup has officially entered the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary, says an article that describes some of the newest words the dictionary contains. It already has 600,000 words in it - is there really room for more? Well, FYI and LOL, most commonly used in text language, have now found their way into the dictionary.

'English is universally considered to be the richest spoken language in terms of number of words.' And I learnt that acronyms - where you have letters that stand for something like MAF (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries) and scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) are only acronyms if they are actually pronounced as a word rather than just the letters. So NCEA (our exam/qualification system in schools) is NOT considered an acronym.

blended words

I was listening to the news the other day, and the announcer was talking about two countries and said they were frenemies. This was the first time I'd heard this blended word and it made me think about some of the other words that have been created out of two separate words. Most of you are probably familiar with brunch - a combination of breakfast and lunch. But have you heard of...

smog - a mix of smoke and fog
spork - a spoon-shaped fork
sitcom - a situation comedy
camcorder - a camera that records video
motel - a hotel for people that drive motors (cars)

Perhaps you could make up some of your own, and add them here by commenting on the post!

How do you fertilize your vocabulary?

One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

This quote is from Evelyn Waugh, one of the great English novelists of last century. So he is a first language English speaker - who forgets words, and who believes that you need to continue to fertilize your vocabulary. What an interesting metaphor! What does it mean? And how exactly do you go about fertilizing your vocab?

For me, I guess reading is what fuels my vocabulary. I was reflecting the other day on how much my daughter's writing has improved since she has left school/study and been reading material that she chooses for herself. It's not just her writing, it's her vocab as well that has really developed. Having the right word to use in the right situation is a real joy, and gives you so many more ways of expressing yourself... as the quote below suggests.

I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. They told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy, I was deprived. Then they told me underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary.

Jules Feiffer - cartoon caption

So tell us how you 'feed' your vocab? Are you deliberate about it - regular feeding, or do you just do it occasionally when you remember? Feel free to add a comment to this posting.

More on being vague

Doing interviews with teachers I am amazed how much vague language we use. The sort ofs and kind ofs just bounce off our lips continually. It must be to do with how we present ourselves - a way of checking to see what our listener thinks of what we just said or not wanting to give a definite opinion, perhaps. What I found interesting as well, is that when I was transcribing I started to 'tune out' the sort ofs and the justs, and left them out when they didn't make any difference to the actual content. So the written word becomes more definite than the spoken linguistically as well as from a media perspective!

How long? Shortish.

We all do it! Use vague language that is.

I just found myself writing an email in which I said ' We'll need an hour' for a meeting, and then I went back and changed it to 'We'll need an hour-ish'. This means that the reader can expect that the meeting might take a tad longer than an hour, rather than me intending to finish within the hour. The '-ish' tag makes the word a bit more vague. However, using -ish with a noun is not very common.

-ish is usually added to adjectives, like tall or short. Nice example at shortish - notice that the example is in the context of speech. -ish is not common in writing. More sentence examples of shortish - again these are all examples from speaking (both formal and informal), but should give you a reasonable idea of where and how you might use 'shortish'.

This Linguarama page gives examples of vague language in relation to time and so on . If you're interested in vague language generally, you might enjoy real examples of vague language in academia.

And how many examples of vague language can you notice in this blog?

Moodle glossaries

I feel excited because I've been experimenting with a Moodle shell getting ready for when we move to this next semester. And I've just discovered the glossary and some of the different things that you can do with it - including image and sound files for instance. I also like the way that everyone in the course is able to comment on words or phrases. Fun, fun, fun!

Light bulb moments

'Eureka!' I'm familiar with, as a Greek expression of discovery. It is supposedly what Archimedes said as he realised that water = body mass is displaced when you hop in the bath. But 'Aha, Erlebnis' was a new one to me when I came across it in a book today.

Definition from Wikipedia = An insight that manifests itself suddenly, such as understanding how to solve a difficult problem, is sometimes called by the German word Aha-Erlebnis. The term was coined by the German psychologist and theoretical linguist Karl Bühler. It is also known as an epiphany.

The German definition of Aha Erlebnis, linked on Wikipedia, eludes me in details, but I did recognise the phrase light bulb moment. I like the idea of a light going on in my thinking and certainly we do talk about 'aha' moments! Erlebnis is the philosophical word for experience.

Image from http://www.auctionignite.com/images/lightbulb.gif

Twitter

I decided that I really should get my head round Twitter and at least understand how it works. Discovered that this entails learning new vocabulary!

• tweet - this is a posting on twitter - like a blog posting
  
• twitter search - can look for trends, which is the word for common themes on tweets
• hashtag - a way of connecting tweets - working with other people (like at a conference) and choosing a keyword with a # at the beginning to allow you to find tweets round the same topic eg. #ALANZ
• RT at the front of someone else's name means you are quoting them = retweet, OH means overheard where you don't want to give the reference
• if you start a tweet with @someone's twitter name - then it will be reply to that person. But if you put @someone else's twitter name anywhere else in your tweet then everyone will see it
  

And I really must acknowledge CommonCraft and the way that they present things so simply so that even I can understand! Also found Twitter FAQ useful for clarifying some of the above.

global English and language change

I just came across blog by Macmillan's Dictionary which describes itself below.

This blog discusses global English, neologisms and language change. We explore a wide range of topics related to English today – slang, etymology, new words to improve your English and common errors in English – as well as posting a weekly review of language and words in the news.

We are interested in English as a living language and how it is spoken around the world by the international community of English speakers. We welcome contributions from guest authors and comments from readers.

A fascinating place to browse...

Favourite words

I asked my family the other day what their favourite words were. Which ones of the words below do you know?

My youngest liked the words rhythm and harrowing. He liked rhythm because the spelling is so complicated! My eldest said she has always liked the word gumption. My middle child came up with heaps of words eg. quintessential, spurious and pragmatic. My husband said he likes auspicious, while I opted for serendipity.

Is it the sound or the meaning that we like about words? Or is it just that we like to feel clever using new words, or words that we think are difficult? What are your favourite words?

Trendy vocab

Slang is obviously one example of trendy vocab. Slang changes over time and is often specific to a particular place as well. My teenagers say 'My bad' when they make a mistake for instance. They use 'sick' or 'mean' for something that is really good. 'That was a sick performance.' Five years ago they were more likely to say something was 'wicked' or 'awesome' to mean really good.

But other words come in and out of vogue as well. Often these relate to the area that you work in. At the moment one of the buzz words in language learning is 'literacy'. In educational technology there is a lot of talk about m-learning (mobile learning).

I found a site on trendy vocabulary called Word Spy - and NONE of the words/phrases had I heard before. But I liked these two...

intexticated

adj. Preoccupied by reading or sending text messages, particularly while driving a car.
—intexticating pp.
—intextication n.

Wikipedia kid

n. A student who has poor research skills and lacks the ability to think critically.

test your knowledge of idioms and slang phrases

It's always difficult for students to understand idioms. And there are just so many idioms round that it is hard to actually learn enough to be of use.

Certainly, understanding idioms is a more useful goal than actually trying to use them yourself. It's difficult to use idioms because if you get them wrong, no-one will have a clue what you are talking about. And they are often so 'fixed' that it is easy to make a small mistake. For example, you wouldn't say 'I don't have any clue what you mean'. The usual idiom is 'I don't have a clue what you mean'.

So this site might be of value to you as a way of learning/recognising the meaning of a few idioms at a time. Suggestion: even 10 a day might tax your learning ability.

spelling bee

I've always liked the site Visual Thesaurus - it shows you how one word relates to others of similar meeting in a nifty visual way. Enter a word in the box and then check out synonyms. Make sure you mouseover on the red dots for the meanings.

This new site from them Spelling Bee is a spelling game which is quite fun - and might develop your vocabulary in a very random way!

Wordle

You can create your own wordles using any piece of text at http://www.wordle.net/. This wordle is using the words in our course booklet. The size of the words is relative to their frequency.

learning vocab never stops

I recently was tidying up the noticeboard above my desk, and came across the list below, which is of new vocabulary for me. I added to the list over several months last year, and I am sharing it as a way of reminding you that no matter how much vocab you think you know, or what advanced level you feel you are at, you can always learn more to help improve your speaking and writing.

cathexis
alterity
stickle
heteronomic
brown nosing (one of my friends used this a week later and I knew what it meant!)
contingent on (checking on meaning), contingent thinking
act up = act out in the USA
instantiate
hegemony (checking pron)
hermeneutics
ontology
epistemology
ontogeny

checked spelling of
nonchalantly
moratorium

What is interesting for me looking back at this list, is that the words that I actually still know the meaning of are the ones that I have come across a number of times since I first met them. So I feel quite comfortable now with the word epistemology, but I haven't got a clue as to what stickle might mean. And there are quite a few words that I think I might recognise the meaning of if I came across them in context!

Available in our library on campus, this book is very useful for advanced students, who want to extend their current vocabulary. There are several chapters that look at collocations and what they are etc, and then the remainder of the book looks at different topics such as work and study, and the collocations that might be useful to know in relation to these topics. I liked the chapters at the end as well, under functions. These consisted of useful phrases and chunks in relation to things that we need to say and write.

There are answers to exercises in the back, so the book could be used for self-study, and the index is a handy reference point.