Words in the dictionary are changing. Specifically words related to nature are getting taken out and words related to computers and computer related things are being added. Words related to real things are going away and words about virtual things are getting created. But this isn't anything new. There are lots of old languages that had lots of very specific nature words. Specifically languages from the peoples that used to live in what's now the UK. Nobody speaks those languages anymore and probably long before they stopped speaking them people stopped using words like Amil from the Devon language to describe thin ice. But these things go back and forth. In the UK people might be removing those words but in other places they're creating new nature words. This book is all about places and their languages relationship with words describing the natural world
ch 2 A counter-desecration phrasebook pg 15
in which nothing is seen - short story about landing on a small island in rough seas
in which names are spoken - Peat and Moors. Mamba - Miles and miles of bugger all. Some Lewis Morland terms - a peat glossary. Words about peat and moors. Wisdom sits in places is a similar book about the Apache people of Western Arizona. Lots of use of the phrase placenames
in which language is lost - People don't speak much gaelic anymore. Toponymy- specific landscape words.
Enwhich enchantment is practised. Disenchantment - knowing that there are no mysteries. Idea: if we have specific words for parts of nature maybe we're less likely to mistreat it.
In which song lines are sung - AMEC wants to build a massive find farm on a moor. One argument in support of this plan in that the moor is a wasteland. The idea of the locals is to describe the detail of the moor with a counter -desecration phrase book. The moor was saved.
In which a baroque fantasia is imagined - this idea that natural vocabulary can be very precise. Then that idea can be taken too far. Can each leaf old a tree have its own name? Not practically. But there are details of nature that are so precise and we are not being nearly as precise in our language describing it.
Glossary 1 flatlands pg 38
Lots of words. Words about flatpands from Gaelic, Sussex, Yorkshire, Exmoor, Fenland, Shetland, Suffolk, poetic, Northamptonshire, east Anglia, north Yorkshire, Irish, Devon, Scots, Dorset, somerset, Herefordshire, Kent, Cornwall, legal, Cumbria, Orkney, anglo-romani, middle English, Welsh, Manx, Essex, agricultural, botanical, Galloway, Cornwall, ecological, Doric, jerriais, Cotswolds and west country.
Chapter three the living mountain pg 55
Mountains you, more specifically the mountains of northern Scotland. Ancient mountains. They used to be taller than the alps. But they've been eroded down over the las billion years. Nan Shepherd wrote a novel called the living mountain back in the 40s. Shepherd is a life long northern scotlandar. She spent a lifetime in those mountains and it shows in her writing. Lots of complicated ever changing Land in those mountains. There's also this idea that you don't just perceive that.mountain with your mind. You experience the mountains with your whole body.
Glossary 2 uplands
Mountain words from mountaineering, Gaelic, welsh, Cornish, Irish, Scots, Northamptonshire, Shetland, Irish, old English, Cotswolds, Kent, official, Sussex, Kent, Cumbria, Anglia, Exmoor, Dorset, Hampshire, hydrological, meteorological, poetic, Fenland, jersey Norman, geographical, Staffordshire and Galloway.
There's a separate section just for ice and snow. Another for slopes and inclines. Valleys and passes have a section.
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