Part of the front garden looking to the street.

Notes from Xanadu

The low temperatures and mild humidity, together with the compost spread last Spring, has the entire garden erupting with green and blooms. New rainbow lorikeets are flapping about being taught to feed from the banksia and grevilleas; they were quite awkward initially but rapidly developed graceful movement. It is rewarding to see these young birds –- I think it’s a first that the parents have nested nearby.

Social Media – Is it Corrupting Our Language?

On the 31 December I commented on Facebook wondering if I need to review my conservative concerns for English. The article quoted below laments that our language is turning feral. However, having thought about how the language has continued to evolve since (I believe C800AD) , it is pointless to not embrace the changes that social media users are introducing. An evolution that we can actually watch.

Natasha Elks, “Absolutely time to unfriend a few words”, The Australian, 6 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/absolutely-time-to-unfriend-a-few-words/story-e6frg6nf-1225816388957

IF a group of grumpy grammarians had their way, you would no longer be able to “unfriend” someone on Facebook, download an “app” on your iPhone, “tweet” about mindless nonsense on Twitter or even indulge in a spot of “sexting” with your paramour.

Based on nominations from furious wordsmiths and language lovers worldwide, an American university has published its annual list of words it would like banished from the English language for “use, misuse and general uselessness”.

Micro-blogging site Twitter sparked ire from the tongue-in-cheek linguists at Michigan’s Lake Superior State University, with calls for the word tweet and all of its variations — including tweetaholic, twittersphere and twitterature — to be banned. Hipsters should also refrain from using friend and unfriend as verbs, such as “Peter was, like, totally getting on my nerves so I unfriended him on Facebook”.