This article reminds me of a book called The Lost Words. It's a picture book featuring a lot of concrete nature words that we've lost over time. For example, cardinal and jackdaw might have just become "bird" for many people because people have lost that precise knowledge of concrete things in nature.
Also reminds me of the Oxford Junior Dictionary controversy
a decade ago. There was a massive public outcry when a popular children's dictionary removed numerous words for the natural world (acorn, fern, willow, buttercup) in favor of computer-related words (email, broadband, cut-and-paste).
Another decade gone by and we've done nothing to reclaim our connection to the natural world.
On a related note, I adore being in the woods, and it always saddens me I cannot name the plants, birds, or trees I encounter. It feels like a part of the wolrd slipping away from me.
With regards to being able to label and name the things around you in the natural world, that's something I absolutely feel as well. I ended up going out on walks with iNaturalist and Merlin along with a physical birding guide in order to make a conscious effort to learn the names of the plants I was seeing and the birds I was hearing. It was really helpful, and while it did require using a device for a bit, it's been really rewarding. I'm now pretty good at identifying who is singing and picturing them, happy on their perch, as I walk by. I highly recommend giving it a shot.
If you live near a botanical garden that’s a great way to learn, I have picked up so much just by going to walk there and glancing at the plant labels! Merlin & the Audubon app are incredible for learning birds.
Fwiw,I had the same regret till I realised that Google Images is a suprisingly accurate source of information. Just take a photo of a tree, leaf, plant etc and it will tell you what it is. Over time, you learn to recognise them yourself and it really does influence your experience and thinking. Now a tree isn't just a tree to me, but an oak, horse chestnut, field maple or yew. And I have a mental image of what they look like, as well as knowing what to look for to tell them apart through the seasons. So other words like "mast" or "Samara" have entered my vocabulary.
It's harder to take a photo of birds but my 7-year-old and I have had a lot of luck just describing them to Google. The other day on our way to her art class we saw a pretty bird we didn't recognise, described it to Google and found out it was a chaffinch. She was over the moon! I've started teaching her about trees and she picks it up so quickly, she can tell the difference between a rowan and an ash, a London plane and a Norwegian maple. Emotionally, it's just a very rewarding kind of knowledge.
As someone who once wanted to be a writer and worked as a editor for a time, the lost words are significantly preferable to the gained ones, at least from a literary perspective. They are all of them more artistically precise and evocative, likely for reasons of the dual processing (sensory and verbal) the author mentioned. It's as if in updating this list, someone took all of George Orwell's rules for good writing in "Politics and the English Language," and did the exact opposite. Given that Orwell's thesis is that clear writing makes for clear thought, which is necessary for a functioning political society, that concerns me.
I foresee this only getting worse. Concrete descriptions are where LLMs flounder most in "literary" writing, since they have no access to a physical sensory world. As they dominate more and more of society's text, I have no doubt our vocabularies will become increasing abstract and less tied to the world around us.
This saddens me deeply. I have felt often in recent years that we are becoming less human, that day-to-day experience is more aquaeous--thin and insubstantial--that we experience things more through screens than the things themselves. It's disheartening but unsurprising to see that reflected in the way we talk.
snortney | 18 hours ago
This article reminds me of a book called The Lost Words. It's a picture book featuring a lot of concrete nature words that we've lost over time. For example, cardinal and jackdaw might have just become "bird" for many people because people have lost that precise knowledge of concrete things in nature.
macnalley | 15 hours ago
Also reminds me of the Oxford Junior Dictionary controversy a decade ago. There was a massive public outcry when a popular children's dictionary removed numerous words for the natural world (acorn, fern, willow, buttercup) in favor of computer-related words (email, broadband, cut-and-paste).
Another decade gone by and we've done nothing to reclaim our connection to the natural world.
On a related note, I adore being in the woods, and it always saddens me I cannot name the plants, birds, or trees I encounter. It feels like a part of the wolrd slipping away from me.
Quouar | 15 hours ago
With regards to being able to label and name the things around you in the natural world, that's something I absolutely feel as well. I ended up going out on walks with iNaturalist and Merlin along with a physical birding guide in order to make a conscious effort to learn the names of the plants I was seeing and the birds I was hearing. It was really helpful, and while it did require using a device for a bit, it's been really rewarding. I'm now pretty good at identifying who is singing and picturing them, happy on their perch, as I walk by. I highly recommend giving it a shot.
V0lchitsa | 11 hours ago
If you live near a botanical garden that’s a great way to learn, I have picked up so much just by going to walk there and glancing at the plant labels! Merlin & the Audubon app are incredible for learning birds.
anneofyellowgables | 11 hours ago
Fwiw,I had the same regret till I realised that Google Images is a suprisingly accurate source of information. Just take a photo of a tree, leaf, plant etc and it will tell you what it is. Over time, you learn to recognise them yourself and it really does influence your experience and thinking. Now a tree isn't just a tree to me, but an oak, horse chestnut, field maple or yew. And I have a mental image of what they look like, as well as knowing what to look for to tell them apart through the seasons. So other words like "mast" or "Samara" have entered my vocabulary.
It's harder to take a photo of birds but my 7-year-old and I have had a lot of luck just describing them to Google. The other day on our way to her art class we saw a pretty bird we didn't recognise, described it to Google and found out it was a chaffinch. She was over the moon! I've started teaching her about trees and she picks it up so quickly, she can tell the difference between a rowan and an ash, a London plane and a Norwegian maple. Emotionally, it's just a very rewarding kind of knowledge.
[OP] happy_bluebird | 17 hours ago
goes to see if my library has it
Oh cool it’s the same author as Is a River Alive? Robert Macfarlane
anneofyellowgables | 11 hours ago
Yes, he is excellent, as are everybody associated with this project (especially Spell Songs).
[OP] happy_bluebird | 7 hours ago
who exactly is that?
anneofyellowgables | 17 minutes ago
Robert MacFarlane? He's a author and academic and all round great guy.
FighterOfEntropy | 11 hours ago
I will always remember “jackdaw” because it’s essential to build the pangram “jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.”
macnalley | 17 hours ago
Well, that made me sad.
As someone who once wanted to be a writer and worked as a editor for a time, the lost words are significantly preferable to the gained ones, at least from a literary perspective. They are all of them more artistically precise and evocative, likely for reasons of the dual processing (sensory and verbal) the author mentioned. It's as if in updating this list, someone took all of George Orwell's rules for good writing in "Politics and the English Language," and did the exact opposite. Given that Orwell's thesis is that clear writing makes for clear thought, which is necessary for a functioning political society, that concerns me.
I foresee this only getting worse. Concrete descriptions are where LLMs flounder most in "literary" writing, since they have no access to a physical sensory world. As they dominate more and more of society's text, I have no doubt our vocabularies will become increasing abstract and less tied to the world around us.
This saddens me deeply. I have felt often in recent years that we are becoming less human, that day-to-day experience is more aquaeous--thin and insubstantial--that we experience things more through screens than the things themselves. It's disheartening but unsurprising to see that reflected in the way we talk.
Numerous-Glass3225 | 14 hours ago
Am I the only person that found the whole interactive/half-infrographic aspect of this terrible to read? Can I please just have paragraphs?