Are those some pentapeptides in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

Jargon is a strange thing. It's usually defined as a kind of specialist or technical language used only by a particular group. The jargon of different groups can be baffling to outsiders, but that's usually part of its appeal: if they don't know what you're on about, you might be able to say rude things without them finding out. It can also be used to create the impression that you know what you're on about. (If I start calling pictures graphology, or words lexis, I might start fooling someone that I know what I'm on about...)

So, this report in The Daily Mail (I promise I didn't buy it - I saw a woman from Chingford reading it on the train) about cosmetics companies' using pseudo-scientific jargon to bamboozle unsuspecting readers is quite a good read. According to some experts, the cosmetics firms are making up their own words to try and make their products sound more high-tech than they really are.

Elsewhere, this article about in-group medical jargon includes such gems as "doing a Hasselhof" - inflicting a bizarre and possibly alcohol-related injury to yourself - and being a Jack Bauer - a doctor still standing after 24 hours.

Useful for:
ENA1 - Language & Representation
ENA5 - Language Change

More on w00t...

Today's Guardian features a beginner's guide to what they term "Geekspeak", or what others term "Leetspeak". The Merriam Webster US Dictionary has chosen w00t as its word of the year, but as this article points out, w00t has been around for a long time in gaming and hacker circles.

Some of the other terms covered are LOLcats, teh and LQTM, all of which are interesting examples of language change processes in action (acronyms and compounds in the case of LOLcats, random fluctuation for teh and initialism for LQTM).

Useful for:
ENA5 - Contemporary Language Change
ENGA3 (new spec) - Language Explorations

More sluts and faggots

The newspaper response to the Radio 1 "faggot" ban is covered here:
Daily Mirror
The Sun (also features some humorous PC Christmas Carols)

The backdown came after a day of scathing attacks by critics including Jean
MacColl – the mum of Kirsty, who died in 2000 aged 41. Jean said: “It’s
pathetic, absolute nonsense. Today we have a lot of gratuitous vulgarity, which
I think is quite unnecessary. “But these people in the song are characters and
they speak like that. It’s a great song – it’s like a play.” Enraged fans also
bombarded BBC radio, television and websites – as well as The Sun.

The Guardian (comment piece by Peter Tatchell)

What concerns me is not so much the use of the word "faggot" as the
hypocritical condemnations of Radio 1's original decision to bleep it out. They
wouldn't endorse the use of the words "nigger", "paki", "yid" or "spastic". For
the sake of consistency, either the f-word should be disallowed too or these
other bigoted words should also be permitted. It's the inconsistency that
grates. Let's also remember that in Fairytale of New York the word "faggot" is
being sung as an insult, alongside the words scumbag and maggot. In this abusive
context, it difficult to feel comfortable about its usage. But the crunch issue
is double-standards. I challenge those who defend the use of the word faggot in
these lyrics to state publicly that they would also defend the right of white
singers to use the n-word as a term of abuse in a song. They won't and that
makes them cowardly homophobic hypocrites.

Christmas last minute

Two more days for getting in orders in time for Christmas from my webshop. Any orders placed before about lunchtime on Thursday will make the last posting to arrive by Christmas.

Thanks to everyone who's ordered so far : )

Deep Breath Pics

On ‘Deep Breath’ Font 8a, yesterday. Photo: Stone Country

After several slices of Claire’s freshly baked gingerbread (so far responsible for several of the hardest rock climbs in Scotland) A John Watson led team scraped ice from cars and headed from my wee hoose up a frosty Glen Nevis. Pete Murray is making a wee film of Scottish bouldering, and John finishing off his selected guide for Scottish bouldering and wanted some film and shots of a recent problem of mine; Deep Breath Font 8a.

The fantastic Egyptian move on Deep Breath. Photo: Stone Country

I did it back in October and I’ve been trying a direct version since then which is probably too hard. Si O’conor once claimed a line somewhere on this lovely little overhang called The Morrighan.

We warmed up on the lovely arête next door - a long Font 7a of great quality. Afterwards I focused and was able (to my surprise) to repeat Deep Breath first try. Good sign for the current form.

The Mamores from Sky Pilot yesterday

Looking up Glen Nevis from Sky Pilot

After another repeat so Pete had the shot, we chased the sun uphill to Sky Pilot, but it had left behind Stob Ban by the time we got there, leaving a bitter wind and attempts on a sick project in my biggest Duvet jacket BRRRR!

Tweedley was on hand to provide a much needed foothold to artificially get a feel of the finishing sloper. Nice line.

Thanks to John Watson for the photos. His book on bouldering philosophy is here

You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot...

...is what my Mrs yells at me every morning when I check for blog posts rather than feed the children their breakfast. But this post's not really about that, but Radio 1's insane decision to bleep out the words faggot and slut from the greatest Christmas song ever recorded, The Pogues' and Kirsty MacColl's Fairytale of New York.

They've now gone back on their bleep ban and decided the full unexpurgated lyrics can be heard. Huzzah! The controversy isn't that new though - as this posting from last year shows - and the words faggot and slut have clearly got very negative connotations. But if a song that so painfully and wittily tells the story of a couple whose dreams of a new life have gone down the pan can't use a bit of rough-edged vernacular, what's the world coming to? Should we paint over the breasts on Old Masters' nudes? Should we put loin cloths over the naughty bits of ancient statues?

You can do your bit to make the world a better place by downloading the Pogues' track and preventing that zero-talented no-mark Leon from claiming the Christmas number one slot.

On a more serious level, the argument about banning words is picked up here in The Times and here in Spiked Online.

Something old, something new, something w00t...

With A2 Language Change in mind, here are some links to things about new words, old words and what lexicographers do:

The 2007 Word of the Year (as decided by the Merriam Webster dictionary)
How the meanings of words are decided upon
Unfamiliar words and what they mean

Very Vocabulary #120 Learn English Vocabulary Words Podcast

Davemacleod.com new stuff

Some of you will know that I recently wrote an e-book called ‘How to Climb Hard Trad’. I spent a long time on it trying to explain clearly the mental, physical and practical tactics you can employ to climb harder trad routes, whatever your level. It’s got detailed sections on how to be bold, how to climb safely, even when really close to your limit on trad climbs and how to tip the scales much further in your favour than most climbers know they can.

Initially I was giving copies away with the Committed DVD. But I’v

e just extended the offer to include the e-book free with any DVD or book purchases from my webshop. I’ve just added King Lines and Psyche DVDs and the new Stone Play book to the shop so there are more titles to choose from. Enjoy.

It’s worth knowing that we are dispatching DVDs first class in time for Christmas right up until the last UK posting day on Dec 20th. That goes for Claire’s site Velvet Antlers too.

Back in the glens

After returning home from the big smoke I was able to get out into Glen Nevis for a boulder. I was still feeling light after Spain, but weak after much ass time at work. Still nearly did a very hard move on a boulder project. In the morning, Tweedley arrives. So new problems will be done tomorrow.

I am definitely feeling that next year I want to really focus on a few special projects. So I think It’s time to venture indoors for a few weeks (after the current lovely dry weather ends – I’m sure it won’t take long!!). Training time.

Home for Christmas

Claire and I are on the way back north to the Highlands after touring around England coaching climbing and giving lectures. Climbers are always so welcoming and it makes it much nicer to run these events especially when you’re on a bit of a hectic road trip. When we get home it’s time to catch up on the rest of our work and then I can climb again.

Of course, at this time of year you tend to think back on the year and also towards the next.

2007 was good for many reasons. I worked my ass off and broke some good barriers. I moved to the Highlands, climbed some routes I didn’t think I could climb and did much fun work that I really enjoyed. 2007 was also bad for a couple of reasons. The main one being the same as the good reasons – I worked my ass off, a bit too hard at times. Sometimes I as a touch frayed at the edges and spread a little too thinly. I love being able to give my full focus to things.

So that leads me nicely to my plan for 2008. With my climbing, I’m planning to work super hard on a few special projects. Just a few, but if they go... well, let’s say I’d be quite overwhelmingly happy. With my work, the hard/over work from 2007 should hopefully have set up the conditions to focus on some exciting projects. For me 2008 will be a year of writing, film and some more online mini businesses that I really enjoy working on.

There may be some very long days and nights, but I certainly can’t say my work is dull. Here’s to that for 2008. Anyway, here were my favourite climbs from 2007:

January: Blind Vision E9 7a, L’Odi Social 8c+
February: Sanction Font 8b, Isami VIII,8
March: Darwin Dixit 8c
April: Fell off Metalcore
May: Metalcore 8c+
June: moved house, fed midges at Steall crag
July: Steall midges got fatter
August: Ring of Steall 8c+, Hell and Back E10
September: If Six Was Nine E9, Dawes Rides E8, Caution E8, Impact Day E8
October: Fell off the Anvil project, wrote my e-book on the bus home, built velvetantlers.co.uk
November: A Muerte 9a (yes it did take the whole month!)
December: it ain’t over yet!

Climbing magazines (do they have a future)

It’s been interesting seeing the complete transformation of the way we read about climbing in the last five years. When I started out as a regular web surfer in uni, circa 2001, climbing websites were most definitely a novelty. Interesting, in a nerdy way, but certainly not essential viewing. These days, they are certainly the most effective (generally speaking) way of finding out anything about climbing, be it news, information or entertainment. Plus, it’s free and instant. That’s a bit of an unbeatable combination don’t you think?

It must pose a very big discussion point (understatement) for anyone who runs a climbing magazine. I don’t know the numbers, but from what I hear, things are getting more and more difficult for climbing magazines. Less readers, and the problem of not being able to break news anymore. What else could go wrong? Advertisers realising that their chances of getting their message across might be easier and at the very least a lot more measurable online.

So what is there left for print climbing mags to offer? It seems to me all there is, is super high quality writing and photography. Alpinist does pretty well at this. One thing is for certain, a modest change in response to online media will not be enough to prevent extinction for print mags in a very short time. Only a pretty radical change will do.

I certainly couldn’t think of a bombproof solution. But I guess a big part of it must be ditching legacies of the past, like esoteric news (for instance leave BMC news to the BMC website!) and columns by commentators who are obviously struggling to find something to say. The biggest thing I don’t get about the British mags is the aversion to interviews. I love someone to explain why they don’t run them so much now! You only need to look at the mag racks in WH Smiths to see that interviews with interesting folk shift magazines.

In the summer I spent a wet day in Pete’s Eats in Llanberis. If you’ve been there you’ll know upstairs they have a monster archive of climbing magazines right back to the 60’s. Most of it was pretty uninteresting stuff that held my attention for nothing more than seconds. Right at the end I came across a copy of Rock & Ice from the early nineties. In one issue, they had in depth interviews with Ben Moon, Wolfgang Gullich and Patrick Edlinger. That one kept me going for about half an hour – about 2000% of average time I spent flicking through the others!

The only chance the climbing mags have got right now is that the websites still aren’t perfect either. There’s a big opening for someone to do a decent climbing news website. UK Climbing is the daddy right now, but until they start making their news more in depth and use a better site layout there is an opportunity for someone to step in and provide the service. I guess the problem is that publishers of major websites are still figuring out how to make their sites work financially. There’s no getting round the fact that running a major site that is high enough quality to be a ‘must visit’ has got to be a job for someone (but a job I’m sure lots of net savvy climbers wouldn’t mind!). The money to make it work is definitely there for the person who has the time, motivation and imagination. I certainly know that some of my sponsors are planning more and more to spend their advertising budget online. Get there quick though, before UKC take the bull by the horns and launch a new version (I suspect this will be sooner rather than later). The problem will be that it will be down to the site to make it painfully obvious to the advertisers exactly how much they will benefit and to secure the contributions from the climbers to generate the stuff that people want to read about.

Interesting times.

New words scrapbook revisited

Given the very limited success of the New Words Scrapbook post back in October (a massive 5 entries, 2 of which are mine and one from another teacher at a different college), I'm going to attempt to revive it here. Now we're doing more work on Language Change and less on coursework, you might actually have some time to post examples of new words you've come across.

My favourites so far are "bluetooth high-five" and "Co-D", the definitions of which can be seen on the original post.

Post your new words here and you can win packets of Asda's Whatevers (the sweets like Lovehearts but with chavvier messages).

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Change

Code-switching

For a bit of light entertainment, here's a video of Armstrong & Miller repping their endz (if you will) as World War Two fighter pilots. There is a serious linguistic point in here somewhere about code switching (moving between varieties/dialects of English) and context, but just enjoy it...

A peculiar evolution

Following on from our work on Language and Representation and the use and abuse of "the n-word" the other week, Michael in D block AS Language sent me these links to Def Jam Poetry videos on You Tube, the best of which (in my opinion) is Dahlak Brathwaite's Peculiar Evolution which contains this tongue-twisting and mind-bending analysis of the word "nigger":

a word used to exclude is now exclusively used by the excluded, and with it excluding its original excluders, who use the slang to now gain inclusion into the group their group wanted to be removed from

You get a better idea of what he's on about by watching it here.

And these other links are worth a look too: Julian Curry and Red Storm.

Useful for:
ENA1 - Language & Representation

Very Vocabulary #119 Learn English Vocabulary Words Podcast

Crazy Rain

Wow I must say even though I’ve been a regular in Lochaber for 14 years, my first winter here is proving an impressive eye opener to the impressiveness of the rain here. The stuff just doesn’t stop tipping out of the sky! Still my journey home on the west highland train line from Spain reminded me why Scotland is so much more impressive than anywhere else I’ve been.

So with all this rain, it’s been indoor action for me. Built a nice model of the La Rambla crux in the Ice Factor last night after work. Tomorrow we leave to journey south again for my lectures in Sheffield on Sunday night and London on Monday night. See you there hopefully!

Topless kilted slacklining above the falls of Nevis

Claire's job has got a lot more interesting lately! All the pics and story are on Claire's blog

Every day, a little more ‘A Muerte’

Climbing A Muerte 9a, Siurana. All photos: Hot Aches Productions

So Dave Graham said. Here’s to that. The Spanish phrase ‘a muerte’ translates as ‘to the death’. So where the Scots shout ‘Gaun big man!’ at people wobbling on routes, in England it’s ‘ave itttttt-ah’, in France it’s ‘allezallezallezallez!’ (If you haven’t experienced this, it’s a little off putting) and in Spain they shout ‘Benga! A muerte!’ Basically it means go for it. Graham’s attitude of going for it a little more every day is kind of infectious.

Back in March I spent some days trying the famous 9a ‘A Muerte’. It had already been given the name before Richard Simpson muscled his way up the first ascent a couple of years ago. After I did the neighbouring L’odi Social 8c+ earlier this year, Richard emailed me to suggest I try a ‘real’ hard route, like his one. So I did.

Since I am not so strong, I made a three-and-a-half- week space in my diary to travel back to Siurana and get a good spell trying the climb. Unfortunately, attempts to clear all my necessary work before I left meant I had almost two weeks of detraining before I left.

I had dismissed the standard sequence for the crux as being two ‘body strength’ dependent for my frame, slapping at nearly full span for two finger pockets out to each side. Bad tactics, MacLeod. After wasting nearly two weeks trying a crazy alternative sequence matching a finger slicing sharp pocket and waiting for my torn fingers to heal, I reverted. Once I gave the standard sequence a chance (like for 10 minutes!), I found it was actually quite easy (for a 9a crux you understand). Immediately I could redpoint to the last move.

The daily routine was to warm up with a 7c-8a, climb to the 5th bolt on A Muerte (an 8b link) and reverse to the ground. Then, wait…

Once the bitter evening winds blew and the sun dropped low, I blasted onto my redpoint - 20 moves in 30 seconds of bang, bang, bang from hold to hold before my strength gave out in spitting distance of the finishing jug.

All that was needed was another moves’ worth of juice in my arms to make it happen. Two days complete rest while working in Torello was just the ticket, and on our return I arrived back at the rockover and had the strength leftover to grab that big undercut and scream from the top of my lungs “COME ONNNNNN!!!”

It was kind of nerve wracking to hang on that undercut and shake out, just a formality 8a crux to go… or would it be? I passed Diff, hanging beside me filming. Him silent and motionless, me panting and shaking – strange. So, the first step of my preparation for Echo Wall is complete.

On my last day, after Patxi had dispatched Le Rambla 9a+ 3rd go (my head shakes in disbelief), I did the moves on La Rambla. Hmmmm…

Velvet Antlers is online!!

For the last couple of months I’ve been working silly hours helping Claire prepare to launch her new venture Velvet Antlers. The business is Claire’s and she’s been working mega hard on it herself. My part in the effort has been to build her site and try and kick off a bit of marketing.

So what is she selling then? Hampers! (pretty cool ones at that). Claire has been really into food for years and more so all the time. Last Christmas Claire and I were wandering around the shops and happened to be looking at some really nice looking food. At the time we were stuck for what to get some folks in our families for their Xmas, and Claire hit on the idea of choosing some of the different lovely looking foods and making up a hamper full of cool and very luxurious looking stuff. Problem solved! Claire really enjoyed choosing and buying all the nice food and putting together, and our recipients seemed pretty psyched to get something they would really like.

Lets face it, these days getting people gifts can be pretty hard going. Why? Everyone has everything they need! We’re all just looking for something kinda nice and stylish to give people. And it’s way more satisfying if you know they will definitely like it and use it.

So, naturally the pleasure for Claire, turned into business idea, and now turned into a business, just launched yesterday! You’ve got to admit hampers are a stonking good idea if you’re getting someone a gift. But it’s not so often thought of because they are mostly jam packed full of old school twee style (Tartan and shortbread overload for the Scottish ones). Claire’s tried to make them cool again…

And succeeded (I reckon)!

Take a look at the site. The roof o’er our heeds depends on this new venture working out, so we’d really appreciate if you could tell us what you think of the hampers. Would you part with cash to buy one for your mate/mum/girlfriend etc xmas, birthday or new sprog? If so, why? Please tell us. If not, why not? Do they need changed in some way d’ya reckon?

I built the site myself – it was my first effort at building a site and my starting point was “what’s HTML?”. I’d really appreciate if any of you web designers, SEO gurus and the like can find any obvious holes in it or just something obvious we haven’t done.

Claire’s been getting into her blogging on the site as well, mostly about style and highland life in general, but there’s also some wee posts in there about extreme belaying (while spouse sketches up an E10) and Claire’s own climbing adventures.

Claire’s site is here

Torello Mountain Festival

Everything in Spain is very chilled out and relaxed. This even goes for big public events, it turns out. We were in a stress (well I was anyway) about arriving kind of late at the Torello festival since I was speaking on stage 40 minutes after we drew up at our hotel. But when I turned up, my fellow speakers were just heading out for dinner, and Josune Bereziartu was even later to arrive than me!

In the brief about the event I was invited to, the festival told me they would “concrete me when I arrived” about the subject for the stage discussion (aren’t auto translators great?). I was concreted over dinner that we would be discussing the progression of rock climbing over the last 25 years. To a packed theatre minutes after finishing our tea, Adolfo, Silvo, Josune and I were all asked about our personal philosophies of climbing and what we thought were the best things going on in climbing right now.

Despite our disparate backgrounds and specialities, it was interesting that we all seemed to be singing from the same hymn sheet. All of us spoke of the importance of minimal impact on the mountains, style of ascent and adventure in climbing. Josune, best known for her sport climbing achievements, cited onsight trad climbing as her favourite branch of climbing and told the audience that her next aspiration in climbing was a route on the Grande Jorasses. That’s not to say any of us were down on sport climbing, far from it. That very morning I was throwing myself at yet more redpoints on the bolted walls of Siurana. Instead, we agreed that sport climbing has a place in the whole sport that should grow alongside, rather than at the expense of the other climbing disciplines.

The next day was one of my best of my 24 day trip in Spain. While the rest of my friends went climbing, I took time out and didn’t think about climbing for most of a whole day. My normal climbing back in Scotland has so much variety, and the climbing activities are punctuated by the very different skills to be learned and practised in working for yourself. Nearly three weeks of just climbing in the same place, on the same rock type and the same routine was a little tiring.

But by evening I was refreshed and we all trooped round to the cinema to introduce the E11 film to the Spanish audience. Their reaction to the film was, once again, most gratifying.

The final day was my main work appointment, to take part in another round table discussion with the same team as before, this time dealing with the sustainability of climbing, ethics in the mountains, and how the whole game of climbing fits together. Some of the stage time was lost to technical problems with the translation equipment, but we all got our messages across. One of the most difficult questions was regarding the overcrowding of popular climbing areas. At what point is it necessary to limit access to these areas or climbs where the volume of traffic is causing damage to climbing destinations or routes? We agreed that this type of regulation was an anathema to climbers and must be a last resort.

The problem as I see it is with the climbing experience becoming a product for many people, rather than an adventure. When you only have 4 weeks holiday a year, you go for the place where you know for sure the routes will be good, the area will be geared up for you to stay, and you won’t waste your precious holiday time on bad routes. It’s natural to have this approach. Perhaps it’s inevitable that ‘good’ climbing areas will be increasingly overused until they are no longer good or are restricted before people are willing to spread out from them. But does it really need to come to that?

For me it’s a question of independent thinking. I remember before I did my first new route. At this time, climbing opportunities existed completely in guidebooks. If it wasn’t in the guidebook, it’s highly unlikely I’d think about climbing it. Today, most of my climbing aspirations lie outside guidebooks and often have never been written about or attempted before. A complete reversal of approach! And I can tell you that it’s much more satisfying.

Sure, if you go for the routes on the ‘top ten’ lists or with the most stars, they are likely to be predictably satisfying. A bit like eating at your favourite chain restaurant. And so the conversation with your climbing friends goes…

“Did you climb [insert lauded classic]?” “Yeah we had to pass three parties on it but we did it” “was it as good as they say?” “Yeah, it was really nice”

There often isn’t much more to say! In other words, classic ticking is predictably pleasant, but often not really memorable.

If I could give one recommendation for places to go in the world and climb, based on my 14 years experience in the sport it would be this: If there is a ‘must do classic’, don’t do that route. Never, ever wait in a queue for a route – you can never fondly remember the adventure you had passing three parties on the second pitch. If there is no guidebook, go there. It will be much more fun. For every bad route you do or turbulent trip, you will have many more absolutely brilliant one. And in hindsight, even the apparently bad ones will seem much better than the pleasant (but dull and forgettable) ones you had in the popular areas.

Words of War

Here's a link to a good piece from the always interesting BBC News Magazine on the way wars have led to the creation of new words or adaptation of older ones. It's not so long ago that a "tank" was something you kept water in, rather than a large metal thing with a big cannon.

This could be handy for anyone looking at the ways in which social change and historical events have affected language change, and also help any AQA A spec teachers preparing for next year's new spec with its focus on Investigating Representations.

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Change
ENGA2 (from 2008) - Investigating Representations

Very Vocabulary #118 Learn English Words Podcast

Nang slang

"Don't be prang; be nang. And use slang. Bang bang" as the lyrics to my latest release on BaldNinjaRecordings go. Not really*

But "nang slang"- one of the names given to the youth slang influenced by Bangladeshi young people in east London - is covered in real depth in this programme from the BBC Asian Network. If you can get past the first couple of minutes of rather self-conscious attempts at uber-hipness, it's a really good programme, with guest appearances by Tony Thorne (who'll be one of the speakers at our English Language Workshops for teachers in June) and Sue Fox (who spoke about her research into this dialect at our last student conference) among others.

Thanks to my bredren Tony C, aka MC Fruityloops, for this link.

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Change & Varieties

*I have to say this because I told one class last year that the linguist Pamela Fishman was half man half fish and several students believed me.

What should we call the people who want to kill us...

"... Islamofascists? Islamists? Jihadists? Or just plain murderers?" begins Timothy Garton-Ash in a comment piece in yesterday's Guardian. I know what I'd like to call urban 4x4 drivers doing 50mph in a 30mph zone next to my kids' school, but the swearing filter would kick in.

Aside from the fairly provocative use of inclusive pronouns to start the piece (Who are "we" and "us"?) which, to be fair, he attempts to clarify later on, it's a considered reflection on the importance of language labels in identifying "the enemy".

As he goes on to explain, "You might say it doesn't matter that much; the point is to stop them. But finding the right words is part of stopping them. It means we've correctly identified our real enemies. It also means we don't unnecessarily create new enemies by making all Muslims feel that they're being treated as terrorists".

In the topic of Language & Representation we're studying in AS at the moment, the debate over the importance of labels is central. Whether it be ethnic groups, the opposite sex, people of different sexuality, people with disabilities, members of different social classes, subcultures or age groups, labels are part of the way we define others and ourselves. As Garton-Ash points out, if we choose the wrong label we run the risk of alienating a particular group, or choosing the wrong way to deal with them - you can presumably negotiate with a freedom fighter but not a terrorist - but beyond that, the human need to label and to work with stereotypes is worth thinking about in more detail.

Do these labels affect the way we view different people? Do the words actually exert some influence on the way we think, or are the labels just a reflection of our views about the people being labelled? And why do we tend to be so quick to use stereotypes when dealing with members of different social groups?

More questions than answers...

Useful for:
ENA1 - Language and Representation

Hit me baby one more time

No, it's not a story about how Britney Spears has become rhyming slang for beers, but a link to different stories about the intelligence and education of young children.

In this report on the BBC website, researchers at Yale University claim to have discovered that babies show "social intelligence" - a pre-linguistic ability to judge others' intentions - by about 6 months of age.

As we're looking at Child Language Acquisition in AS classes at the moment, and considering different case studies like the wugs test, it's interesting to see how this experiment was designed to rule out other factors, but it's also interesting to see how far cognitive abilities can develop before language appears.

Here's an extract from the report on the BBC website:

Kiley Hamlin and colleagues at Yale University devised experiments to test whether babies aged six and 10 months were able to evaluate the behaviour of others. They used wooden toys of different shapes that were designed to appeal to babies.
The babies were sat on their parents' laps and shown a display representing a character trying to climb a hill.
The climbing character, which had eyes to make it human-like, was either knocked down the hill by an unhelpful character (a toy of a different shape and colour) or pushed up the hill by a helper cartoon figure (another shape and colour).
After watching the "puppet show" several times, each baby was presented with the helper and hinderer toys and asked to pick one.
All of the 12 six-month-old babies tested and 14 of the 16 10-month-olds reached out to touch the helper character rather than the anti-social one.
Further experiments were carried out to rule out other explanations for the behaviour - such as a preference for pushing up or down actions or the appearance of certain characters.

Part of the debate about language development concerns whether children's language develops alongside cognitive skills like a grasp of object permanence, relative size (seriation) and time. Some theorists have suggested that language comes after cognition - once a concept has been understood, the language to label it will follow - while others have suggested that the two develop alongside each other, with language labels helping children place concepts into mental categories more easily.

Behind it all lies a wider debate about the link between language and thought, which the psychologist Steven Pinker has explored in great depth in his latest book The Stuff of Thought.

A different article in yesterday's Guardian suggests that however clever babies of six months are, children of 5 and 6 are too young to be formally taught reading and that pushing children to read at too early an age can affect their confidence and later reading skills.

Children in British schools are taught phonics from the age of four or five and then more formal reading skills in Year 1, but critics argue that the British education system starts kids off too early compared to other European countries with higher literacy rates.

While you don't have to study children's reading and writing for our syllabus, it's a good area to investigate in your second year coursework.

Useful for:
ENA1 - Child Language Acquisition

Looking down the barrel of a gun

Rap lyrics have been blamed for many things - promoting sexist attitudes towards women, celebrating criminality and stoking anti-police attitudes, among other claims - but the link between lyrics and gun crime has been discussed at some length recently and with a little more sense.

Last year we covered this story on the blog and the same arguments are floating around now. And David Cameron - ever the soundbite-hungry attention-seeker - had criticisms to make about Radio 1's lyrical output in this link.

Meanwhile, this thoughtful article on the BBC website explores some of the issues around lyrics and their influence (or not) on young people.

Those of you doing A2 coursework which focuses on rap lyrics might want to have a look at some of the links from these articles, or contribute your own views as comments below.

And to lighten the mood, you can win a bag of Haribo if you can correctly identify the rappers who originally wrote and recorded the track "Looking down the barrel of a gun"... 1st come first served.

Useful for:
EA4C Language Investigation

To Hell and Back programme online

The 'To Hell and Back' programme is online now on the BBC site.

You can watch it here

London Lecture Dec 10th

I've just confirmed a speaking date in London on December 10th. I'm going to be talking about dangerous trad climbing, E10 and why being safe is actually a risky life strategy. Claire will also be talking a little about sprint belaying. Afterwards I'll be showing the film Committed.

If you'd like to come. All the details and online tickets are here

Other dates coming up are:

Glenmore Lodge Dec 1st - clinics for climbing with tools and seminar aabout training for winter climbing.

Sheffield Climbing Works Dec 9th: Safe is Risky lecture.

details of these are here

Very Vocabulary #117 Learn English Vocabulary Words Podcast

Spainblog 4

Fading energy yesterday on Afrodita. But I found a new hold on the crux and linked one move higher than before despite nearly falling asleep before my last burn of the day. So progress has been made. I enjoyed watching Keith fight for a long time with a nasty finishing move on a lovely long 7a+. He stuck it out and made it to the chain. Entertaining viewing.

Resting today. How is it possible to spend nearly a whole day making tea and going to the hypermarket? Now I must get a couple of hours work in. Tomorrow it’s back on the small pockets of Campi qui puigi.

The cultural capital of the urban youth

Ever wondered why some white kids in the sticks want to "talk black" when the nearest they've been to a pimped ride is their uncle's tractor, or why middle class professionals come over all geezerish when they're talking to a plumber who's come to fix their corner bath, or why some young black people in South Africa dress and talk like Californian gangstas? It's cultural capital innit?

It's an idea first put forward by the French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu and it relates to a commodity which someone possesses - usually money, education or connections to a social network, but possibly something less tangible too, such as "cool" or "prestige" - which others value and want. Wikipedia will tell you more here.

So it's interesting to read this article in last week's Times which explains how a particular variety of street slang spoken in working class urban areas of France is influencing the mainstream. I know this is an English Language blog, but if it's happening in France it's probably happening in some ways here too... fo shizzle.

What is it about non-standard varieties that makes Standard English users want to adopt it? And does this mean that non-standard varieties are being looked on more favourably than in the past? It's a tricky one to answer.

On one level, the middle and upper classes have always raided working class speech practices for a bit of "flavour" - hippies appropriating black American vernacular, skinheads staring at the rudebwoys, Tim Westwood being a dork - but it's often been a sort of class tourism (take some of the poor people's words for a bit of a jolly jape and then get the hell out of their ghetto, like man) in which the wealthy, comfortable classes can pick and mix before getting jobs with daddy's firm in the city. On another level, there's been a genuine cross-fertilisation of ideas and language from Joe Strummer of The Clash to recent collaborations between middle class indie rockers and grime artists like Lethal Bizzle.

So, does any of this matter? Yes and no. You still need Standard English to get ahead in this society, I would argue, but if you can code-switch into it from your normal sociolect - be that Cockney, Black British English or a multi-ethnic youth dialect (MEYD) - you'll probably be ok. And after all, there has to be something to be said for peppering your Standard English with a few markers of "realness" just to keep the middle classes on their toes...

For more on Verlan see here
For more on MEYD see here

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Varieties and Change
ENA6 - Language Debates

Spainblog 3

Enjoying shade and cool on Un Rato de Cada Postura 8a, Siurana. Photo: Emma Sutton

Another day on the testing wall of Campi qui Puigi in Siurana. First off I climbed a lovely 8a, Un Rato de Cada Postura. I made a tiny, miniscule amount of progress on a hard route for me, finding some beta that might work for short and weak Scotsmen who can’t pull hard on pockets. We’ll see if it helps next week when my skin is better.

Today I was back on Afrodita, a massive 8c+ I had a day on last year. It was nice to feel stronger on the moves than one year ago and on my second try I could climb it with two hangs. Tomorrow I will try to make that one hang??

Spainblog 2

Redpointing ‘Luxury’ 8b+, Cova boix, Margalef. Photo: Emma Sutton

Yesterday we travelled over to the lovely valleys of Margalef to climb on the conglomerate waves. Emma, Caroline and Keith climbed route after route in full sun. Impressive. I ate bread and hid behind shady trees. But later we nipped across to the dark side of the valley and a lovely overhanging crag where I was able to climb a stunning 8b+ in the evening. I was a little frustrated to miss the ‘1st redpoint’ by missing a hold right at the top. But three tries is still good for me and it was a good feeling to get pumped and fight hard. I am on the first rung of the return to fitness ladder, or maybe it was just that the campsite shower was hot for the first time in some days.

Siurana Ambience

Very Vocabulary #116 Learn English Vocabulary Words Podcast

Spainblog 1

It’s the morning after I arrived in Spain. I’d love to have something positive to say, but I reckon it’s the worst I’ve ever felt at the start of a climbing trip. Sleep deficit has well and truly caught up with me. Yesterday I tried to climb by myself on a shunt while the others visited a different sector, but fell asleep putting on my rockshoes and woke up 2 hours later. Today I’m feeling more human after a decent night, but it’s going to take some time to get in better shape for climbing. Thankfully, time is something I do have.

Zooks, Ziggies n Spliffs

Hey SFXians!

I assure you this is strictly for research purposes- I'm a big old third-year writing a real dissertation- so, in light of this... slang terms for marijuana anyone?!

I'm trying to compile a list of terms with possible dates and etymologies attached, so if anyone in this loving, caring and sharing community comes across links for bringing me closer to such revelations, do reply to my post!

Also, do feel free to explain why you think these terms exist (i.e. why a particular pronunciation? Does it have a link with another word you know?) and why they're changing all the time!

Eternally grateful,

Charissa

Climbing (US) features some Scottish action

Dougald's interview with me is in this month's Climbing mag is online now - here.

Feeling fatigued

I finally finished Claire's new website today after some more all nighters. Tried to train at the ice Factor wall tonight, but was in a sleepy haze... zzzzzzzz

I'm certainly relieved to have that one nailed. yesterday was one of the most hardcore keyboard bashing days I've had, finishing after 6 this morning. It'll be a week or two before we can launch it yet. But my part is done.

On Saturday I go to Spain for some limestone, but it still seems a long way away, much more to be done before I leave.

Novice web design hell

Lovely autumnal woods here in Glen Nevis right now. I took this shot from my living room window!

I’ve not been posting here for a wee bit because I’ve been on a work mission, 16/17hours a day since I got back from my lecture tour in front of the screen trying to build Claire’s new website for her new business that we’ll be launching shortly (more on that very soon).

Although I’ve built my own sites up into much bigger animals than they were when they started out, at least I had a basic site to start with. This time it’s my first effort building a site from scratch. I’m getting there, but with much abuse of caffeine, less than perfect mood state and depressing loss of fitness.

Apologies if you’ve tried to get in touch with me over the past few days, I’ll get round to replying to all my messages shortly.

From my little perch behind my laptop I saw the first ‘proper’ snows of the autumn hit the Ben yesterday which lifted my spirits. Thankfully, a climbing trip is impending, although I’ll have my work cut out to gain my fitness back…

To Hell and Back – Want to see it on BBC2 national?

On To Hell and Back E10. Photo: Steven Gordon

Lots of people commented that they would like to see the To Hell and Back programme on BBC2 national as they couldn’t get BBC2 Scotland or download it off the BBC iPlayer in time. If that’s you, please add a comment to this post with your name to register your feeling. Maybe you live in Scotland and saw it and feel it was good enough that the rest of the UK folks should get a chance to see it? Again please comment below.

I’ll flag this post up to the BBC in a few weeks and if enough people comment, maybe it’ll swing it?

Thanks!

To Hell and Back programme - thanks!

Thanks to everyone who contacted us after the To Hell and Back programme on BBC2 last week by email, txt, blog comment etc, we appreciate the thought so much. We liked the programme ourselves, although our toes curled when we saw that our tour round our wee Glen Nevis house had made the edit. You know that feeling where you hear the sound of a recording of your own voice and cringe a little? Multiply that by a good few times to get the feeling of watching yourself showing a TV audience around your wee hoose.

The programme obviously focused pretty heavily on the danger aspect of the new route I climbed. Here are some reactions from people who watched it:

“I thought it was a great film, but it worried me. It just worries me. The whole thing of someone putting their life at risk... and us all encouraging them to do so, even if we don't mean to, by posting saying how great it is ... it worries me”

“After something like this it's only natural to ponder and if you ever wonder whether you should lift your foot off the accelerator then that is the time to call it a day .. and time to change down a gear and enjoy the ride a bit more. I'm guessing that time has not yet come for you?”

Another comment that folk made was the number of times we were reminded of the consequences of me falling off the route on lead – ‘death’. That word was mentioned many times over. Of course it’s natural that the documentary editors would keep reminding us of this as it creates tension.

‘Climber makes solid and smooth ascent of potentially dangerous climb’

Isn’t really an eye catching documentary premise, compared to:

‘climber attempts death route and nearly doesn’t make it’

Of course the former was what actually happened. If you downloaded or taped the programme, watch the footage with the sound off and look out for any wobbles. It would make quite different viewing. Of course it’s necessary for me to look carefully at the potential consequences of failure and analyse the potential for that occurring. So all I’m doing there is taking a serious route seriously. The bottom line is that there is no way I would have been there if I thought I was going to fall.

I couldn’t eliminate risk of things going wrong, nor would I want it that way. But my preparation and execution of a solid plan for my approach to the climb kept the danger (just) within an acceptable limit.

As the quotes above allude to, films like this make us wonder a lot about risks in life, that’s why they are interesting. To me, it’s simple and clear that some risks in life are utterly essential to get anywhere, whether they are physical, emotional, financial or other types of risk. A live life with no risk at all is not to live – because nothing useful could be accomplished. So the question is not whether to take risks, its whether a given risk is the right risk to take.

What we never see in documentaries like To Hell and Back is the flip side of risk – not taking enough risk, and missing out on doing something amazing with your life. Getting to the end of a long life, never having taken a risk (and never accomplishing things you had the potential for) is a WAY bigger tragedy than coming unstuck while taking a risk that was really worth taking.

So when Dax said “ever wonder whether you should lift your foot off the accelerator?” I say never, ever lift your foot of accelerator, so long as you are accelerating in the direction that is right for you.

As Seth Godin says “safe is risky”

I don't want to talk about it...

There's an interesting article in today's Times about the ways in which men and women supposedly use language differently in arguments. Following on from Deborah Cameron's Myth of Mars and Venus work, I feel dubious of any claim that men do x and women do y, because as Cameron has persuasively put it, most of these claims are exaggerated and tend to generalise people's behaviour, without showing much awareness of context.

But one point that does emerge from this article is that even though it's daft to generalise, maybe there are some patterns of socialisation that influence some women's behaviour and some men's when it comes to arguments. As Christine Northam, a counsellor for Relate the marriage-guidance service says:

I do talk with men who find it very, very difficult to engage with their feelings. Women say: ‘He won’t respond to me, he won’t listen, he thinks he’s right all the time.’ Men have been socialised to think that they know what they are talking about. I know it’s changing, it’s really changing a lot. But that’s still around: ‘Men are powerful and what I say goes.’ Women internalise that too. It’s not just the blokes. Women get very frustrated, hysterical, when trying to get their point across because it seems that it just falls on the dead ground all the time. What they are saying is not being picked up and acknowledged and dealt with.

Certainly the younger men that I see tend to be much more willing to engage with their feelings, keen to understand them and talk about them. Older men find it slightly trickier or more than slightly trickier.

So how important are expectations of what's appropriate "masculine" or "feminine" behaviour to the way we argue? Are we influenced in different ways by our own parents and their arguments, by the way we want to appear to other men or other women?

The article makes interesting reading, even if it does quote a little too heavily from the John Gray book Men are from Mars, Women from Venus...

Useful for:
ENA3 - male/female conversation

Base form of Verb

The base form of the verb is the form of verb in which the verb appears in the dictionary i.e it is free from agreement, tense, or participle endings. The base form of verb is used after:1. The subjunctive moode.g: The deal requires that industrialists join the union2. The modal auxiliarye.g: I can speak Mandarin3. The infinitive marker toe.g: It is time to go4. After verbs of seeing or

Yidiotic chanting

Tottenham Hotspur FC currently languish in the relegation spots of the Premier League and are going through yet more management upheavals, but the club and the fans are also suffering from a resurgent wave of anti-semitic abuse, if reports in today's Observer are to be believed. Spurs' reputation as a north London club with a high proportion of Jewish supporters has led to them being called the "Yids" - both by their own supporters as an affectionate self-labeling term and by others as a pejorative and racially offensive term - so-called because of the German word for Jewish ("Yiddish") which then went on to become the name of the language/dialect spoken by many Jews around the world.

While racist chanting against black players and fans has reportedly decreased since its miserable peak in the late 1970s, anti-Jewish chants have picked up in popularity again, as charming ditties like "Spurs are on their way to Belsen, Hitler's gonna gas 'em again..." might prove.

Read on...

Useful for:
ENA1 - Language & Representation

Put up your hands, for 'tis the grammar police

The prescriptivists are in action again, this time targeting the grammatical accuracy of the BBC's presenters. According to Ian Bruton-Simmonds (a member of the Queen's English Society) in a report in today's Observer, BBC presenters' standards are slipping:

Broadcasters are said to make mistakes such as mixing up singulars and plurals and using 'may' instead of 'might'. One of the most common mistakes cited by language campaigners is the incorrect use of the word refute. They point out that the word means to disprove, not deny.

Their solution?

100 unpaid 'monitors' working from home would note grammatical slips or badly chosen vocabulary. The checkers would then report to a central adviser, who would write to broadcasters outlining what was said and what should have been said.

Oh dear...

Fears about language change are nothing new. Two years ago, Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow was cited as a terrible example to children both linguistically and behaviourally, while about 800 years ago, a homesick Norman monk complained about the ghastly "teeth-grinding" sounds of the English language as spoken by its working and middle classes.

Prescriptivists argue that the language should be controlled and regulated to prevent its decay, while descriptivists would argue that change is inevitable and beyond the regulation of government and self-appointed guardians. A note of sanity is raised towards the end of the article when Adam Jacot de Boinod, author of The Meaning of Tingo says "Language evolves and we should evolve with it".

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Change
ENA6 - Language Debates

n-word and music

According to the BBC 1 Xtra website on Weds., Nas is thinking of calling his new album the n-word. Should this cause consternation, or is it celebration of black culture, a reclamation of the racist slur, rather like gays have done with words like 'queer' and 'gay'? Read the piece and attendant thread of posts here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/tx/nas.shtml
There's a useful link on the same page to a half-hour audio documentary on the topic. Should prove interesting for language change, representation, social contexts - besides, it's a contentious subject. Search the BBC website for earlier items on this topic: it keeps cropping up. More material can be found in the archives of all the major newspapers. Btw, one of my last year's A2 students sent me this link. She's just started a degree in Graphic Design, but misses her linguistic forum on my college VLE; uplifting, don't you think?!

Very Vocabulary #115 Learn English Vocabulary Words Podcast

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Very Vocabulary #114 Learn English Vocabulary Words Podcast

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Very Vocabulary #112 Learn English Vocabulary Words Podcast

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Very Vocabulary #109 Learn English Vocabulary Words Podcast

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Very Vocabulary #107 Learn English Vocabulary Words Podcast

Very Vocabulary #104 Learn English Vocabulary Words

Very Vocabulary #105 Learn English Vocabulary Words Podcast

Very Vocabulary #103 Learn English Vocabulary Words Podcast

Very Vocabulary #102 Learn English Vocabulary Words Podcast

To Hell and Back programme – next week!

Stripping the gear from To Hell and Back E10 after climbing it

Back in August, a massive team of climbers and production staff including myself gathered on Cairngorm to try and make what would have been an amazing live program of new routing on the cliffs surrounding Loch Avon. But the huge effort did not pay off because of the deeply frustrating (at times) Scottish weather. It chucked it down all weekend long on the broadcast days.

I was all set to attempt something that really scared me silly – a new E10 rock climb with very little protection, live on telly! In retrospect I’m quite exceptionally glad I didn’t have to climb it live, but I still wanted to climb it very much , and wanted something good to come of all the effort that went into The Great Climb programme. So I went back the following week and did the route, with the crew filming. My route, To Hell and Back, E10, was the scariest lead I’ve done in my climbing life and a pretty full on experience for both myself, Claire who was belaying and everyone else who was there, it seemed.

We all wondered when the footage would finally be shown on TV. Well, it’s going to be on BBC2 Scotland, next Wednesday (Oct 24th) at 8pm – 9pm. I understand that if you can’t get BBC2 Scotland, you can watch it via sky (if anyone can confirm this or knows of other ways to view BBC2 Scotland around the UK and the world – please comment on this post!).

Loch Avon from the top of To Hell and Back; The Cairngorms are a cool place.

I haven’t yet seen the film myself, but I imagine it could be a bit full on?

My post about leading the route is here and the producer’s view of the experience is here.

Enjoy?

Life on the road

The past weeks have flown by in a bit of a blur of burning the candle at both ends and in the middle. After writing my book, I just had time to get prepped for my wee lecture tour around Scotland. Coach climbers by day, talk about recent routes by evening, drive to another city by night. Sleep fitted somewhere, I think?

I was impressed by Aberdeen’s new wall which I’m certain will bring along some fine climbers in years to come. Tiso did an excellent job of hosting the talks and it’s good to see them running lots of events for climbers when all around, other outdoor retailers seem to be struggling or dying off (if unsurprisingly).

After a rendezvous with Dave Brown at Corran Ferry, we finally got our hands on our stock of the Committed film and spent some considerable time stuffing envelopes and packing off the DVDs.

Claire dispatching a pile of Committeds…

We managed a to squeeze in a walk in between the madness

I had a lovely day climbing with Ruaridh and Ellen in Glen Nevis showing them the delights of the bouldering there in crisp autumn sunshine as birch trees around us shed their leaves. We ended the day climbing near a bouldering project of mine beneath pinnacle ridge, looked at for a long time by several aspirant crimping demons. I thought it would be the first Font 8a in the Glen.

They asked if I would be having a go as we were there, but I said no I wasn’t in good shape after the days and nights on the road. But of course, I couldn’t resist and went for a quick shot, if only to confirm why I failed to hold the crux swing so many times before. First shot, not really focused, and my legs almost swung back before my grip gave out. Hmmm, another go was in order with more focus.

This time I felt I had strength in my body for the first time in ages and held the swing and grunted to the top. As with so many projects, they go much easier without the pressure of expectation.

A beautiful little overhanging wall, no longer a project.

Christ on a Bike! Swearing is good for you

Research by the University of East Anglia has given swearing at work the green light. The Daily Mirror explains:

A study found workers are able to let off steam and defuse tension with a well-timed curse. And many younger staff communicate more effectively by using four letter words to express themselves. But the study found managers who swear in the workplace have a negative effect, damaging morale and making employees feel bullied.

But apparently it's bad for members of certain professions to swear, according to the report, "Clearly it is not right to swear if you are dealing with customers in a bank or if you are a doctor or nurse treating a patient". So, no mention of teachers there. Excellent! Let the swearing commence...or should I say continue?

The psychological and linguistic roots of swearing are also looked at in some detail in Steven Pinker's new book, The Stuff of Thought in which he likens it to the noises dogs make when you tread on their tails. Apparently, our brain circuitry treats swearing as very different from more eloquent forms of language - almost like a reflexive noise: a growl or a bark - which is one of the reasons why stroke victims can often utter swearwords even when other language is restricted, or Tourette's Syndrome patients use swear words almost like nervous twitches.

For those of you interested in swearing and taboo language, Geoffrey Hughes' Swearing: a Social History is a good read, while the Viz Profanisaurus Rex (reviewed on Michael Quinion's excellent World Wide Words site here) is one of the most comprehensive guides to offensive language that you could ever hope to read.

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Change & upsetting your maiden aunt

You're not being kicked off the course...we're thinning out the class

Euphemism is a wonderful thing. At least it is until you get shot by an American soldier and they call it friendly fire, or you lose your job and find you haven't been sacked but the company has downsized. But it can be great when you suffer memory failure over a piece of work you say you handed in but know that you didn't, or suffer a Janet Jackson-esque wardrobe malfunction which is actually a case of indecent exposure. Hiding the horrible truth of death, redundancy, toilet functions or prejudice is what euphemism is all about.

An article in yesterday's London Paper which is so cheap it doesn't actually feature the story online, and an article from last month's Times here take a look at euphemism and its uses. Quoting a new book by John Ayto on the topic of euphemism, The Times article gives some nice examples of business-speak which hide the truth under layers of verbal gibberish:

Rather than fire workers, a company “down-sizes”, “rationalises” or “implements a skills mix adjustment”. Rather than admit to losing money, the accountants will report “negative cash flow”, “net profit revenue deficiencies”, or the mind-bending “negative contributions to profits”. Businessmen talk about “preserving optionality” – finance-speak for “doing nothing”.

And for a view on euphemism from 20 years ago, try this link to an article from Bernard Levin

Useful for:
ENA1 - Language & Representation
ENA5 - Language Change

The origins of new words

An article in today's Independent follows up the story from earlier in the year about the Oxford English Dictionary's quest to find word origins by getting the public to help. This exercise in democratic etymology has proved pretty successful, with earlier than previously recorded citations for expressions like "Daft as a brush", "der-brain" and "the dog's bollocks" making appearances.

More here: Independent article

Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Change

Language Change timelines

As promised, here are links to Language Change timelines for use with ENA5. Remember that you are set texts from 1600-1950 as part of your exam, so do not need to know masses of details about pre-1600 change, but I've suggested some broad areas which are important to remember below.

BBC History timeline

British Library timeline

Important areas to have an understanding of in pre-1600 language change:

Word order becomes increasingly more important in controlling meaning as Old English (Anglo-Saxon) develops. The Norse influence has a part to play in this but the change is almost complete by Early Modern English.
"Layering" of words from other languages is a trend that starts with Norse, continues with Norman and into the present day.
Integration is vital to the development of the English Language from Anglo Saxon through to the present day: where peoples intermingle, languages start to influence each other.
Technology was changing language as far back as 1476 when Caxton brought the printing press from the Netherlands. This helped to cement the East Midlands and South East dialect as the standard and led to the diffusion of written English around the country.

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