Episode 39: Should we kill 'WOW' word of the week? (Part 2)

Andy Psarianos

Hi, I'm Andy Psarianos.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Hello, I'm Emily Guille-Marrett.

Adam Gifford

Hi, I'm Adam Gifford.

Introduction

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Andy Psarianos

Welcome back everyone. Ultimately, language is about, it's about communication, right? And it's about knowing how to convey an idea, a concept, a thought to someone else. That's really what it's about. And I think, to me, and I don't really know all that much about teaching and learning languages, but it seems to me that a rich vocabulary is a byproduct of being fluent and being good at that skill. It's a byproduct. It's not what makes you good at that skill. It's a problem we run into in education all the time where we say, well, how do you know if someone's good? You say, well they have a rich vocabulary, right? So let's teach them lots of words, because then they'll have rich vocabulary. Therefore, that equates to being good. But it doesn't really, it doesn't because it's not actually not what being good at a language means. It's just a byproduct. It's like saying, well, wow, all the good aeroplanes have lots of wheels when they land so let's put lots of wheels on this aeroplane and it's going to be a good aeroplane. Right? It's just as ridiculous of a statement as that.

Dr. Mario Trono

Well, that's been the major sin of word of the week, as far as I can tell. And you used to see it online and in magazines, oh, improve your word power. They made it even sound like you will be magic and powerful if you can alienate everyone at a cocktail party by tossing out the word sibilance or consternation with nobody's interested in it.

Andy Psarianos

Okay. So here's a challenge for you guys, right. Can you recall a recent event? By recent I mean, as the grown up, forget about school, right. As an adult, an instance where you've run into a word that you didn't know or didn't understand, that you got excited about and what led you to that?

Adam Gifford

I mean, I just remember, I'd just recently become a headteacher and there wasn't a lot of support or training or professional development for headteachers. It was almost as if, when you got there, that was it. You've reached the pinnacle, just stay there then. So I took a... I was doing some work at university and I remember that these brilliant lecturers, God, I loved them. And, but they gave this piece of writing to read. I reckon I understood about half it, like I understood about half of it and I felt really thick. I felt really like, oh my God, I'm supposed to be... I'm in charge of a school, I've been reasonably successful throughout. And I thought, I've gone through some academia.

So I think that what was interesting is, in the discussion afterwards, the skill that these two ladies had, because I didn't mind saying that to them. And yes, it does take, you have a different lens when you read it. But what I thought was wonderful was that they turned it back into something simple, but I also then was able to access more reading because I understood those words. So, and I understood how they were being used. And I understood why, in this particular circumstance, they were the right word and there wasn't a great deal of margin for error. So it wasn't just a case of simplifying something for me. That made me feel good as a human being, just to have it explained to me. But it also opened things up for me that were wide ranging.

And I think that's a little reminder as it's... Maybe as adults, we don't feel like that often enough to be able to empathise with, I don't know, the children that we're working with or students that we're working with. Because we choose what we read by and large. And when we do decide to read something that's out of our comfort zone, as a general rule, we stop reading it. This is rubbish. Anyway, pompous, elitist stuff, get rid of it. So I think that, that for me was very real, visceral. Very, very real. Yep.

Dr. Mario Trono

Well, for me, that's a very sober and intellectual example you gave there, Adam. I was just going to tell about the time that I misused a word and had a very sharp learning curve. I was with a group of people and, that I was trying to impress. And they wanted me to go to another conference session with them. We were all at a conference and I said, no, I'm sorry. I can't, I've got to go to the room and relax a little bit. I'm not feeling well. And they said, oh, come on. You just have conference fatigue. And I said, no, really, I feel a little bit like I could defecate on the rug right now. I didn't know what defecate meant. Even, I was in my thirties. I thought it meant to throw up. I didn't know that it meant-

Andy Psarianos

The other thing.

Dr. Mario Trono

Use the facilities. So I remember as we were walking, everybody slowed down and I kept walking. I had to turn around and I looked back at them and they were just, oh, well, if you're that bad. And I said, and then I thought to myself. And I just intrinsic, instinctively knew that wasn't the right word. But if I'm going to find a more intellectual, serious thing to say like Adam did, I would think of the time when I suffered from the thesaurus problem where I thought... I was too quick to go to the thesaurus and find that fancy word. So I was writing a personal response once, and I was describing a woman sitting in a beautiful Bohemian coffee shop. And I wanted to say that she very, she matched her surroundings. She really fit in with her surroundings.

So I went looking in the thesaurus and came across the word commensurate.

Andy Psarianos

Ooh.

Dr. Mario Trono

And I thought, oh, that's lovely. So I did the cardinal sin, I did not look the word up first. I just decided it was fancy pants and I was going to amaze everybody with it in a lovely sentence. So I wrote, she seemed so commensurate with her surroundings. And I got the paper back, this was a hard copy paper, and the professor had written in the margin, oh, she was an accountant? And I remember the way the prof said it, oh, she put, oh in just to really bug me. Oh, she was an accountant? And I was like, what? Instead of looking it up again, I went and asked her about it. And she goes, well, Mario, the commensurate has connotations and denotations, you don't use it in that context. It means a person's pay is commensurate with their workload, it's almost a technical word. Oh, and I realised, you always look the word up. Don't just grab a synonym to be fancy.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Don't just take the wow word of the week.

Andy Psarianos

Don't just take the wow word of the week. There you go. Good comeback, Emily.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Can I give you very quickly, the one that's made me smile? So this is hilarious, but I didn't even know this was a thing in Britain and you guys might know this, but it was my mother in the garden saying that she'd seen a gramfer gravy.

Andy Psarianos

A what?

Emily Guille-Marrett

A gramfer gravy.

Andy Psarianos

Okay.

Dr. Mario Trono

Is that a phrase or a word?

Emily Guille-Marrett

It's a word.

Dr. Mario Trono

Wow. I am wowed by your word.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Okay.

Andy Psarianos

Is it a real word?

Emily Guille-Marrett

Exactly. This is the kind of thing that you and Anne would start, definitely. So my mother, and I said, a what? She showed it to me. I said, this is a woodlice, it's a woodlouse. What did you say? And she said a gramfer gravy, that's what we call them in the west country. So I had to go and investigate this. Did you know that there are over 40 different words for a woodlouse, woodlice, in this country?

Andy Psarianos

No.

Emily Guille-Marrett

So I'm going to very quickly... The United Kingdom, this tiny country, you can go to, not very far down the road and they'll call it something else. So I'm going to go through them really quickly. Chiggy pigs, chicky pigs, chuggy pigs, chucky pigs. We've got slunker pigs, wood pigs, sour pigs, grandad gravies, grandads, grammasows, granny greys, gramfy krugers, krugers gramfy krugers, gramfers, gramfer gravies, cheesy bugs, cheese rockers, cheesy bobs, cheesers, cheese balls, monkey peads, monkey peas, monkey pigs, pill pigs, sour bugs, slatey beetles and slaters. And there are many more. So that was my new word gramfer gravy. And I have to say from now on, it is not called in our house, a woodlouse because my mom topped it with the west country's gramfer gravy. It's a much better word.

Andy Psarianos

Here. I'm struggling a little bit. I'm just trying to think of where do these things, how do these things, originate? So pig, I kind of see how it could be related to a pig, I suppose. But monkey-

Dr. Mario Trono

No, I'm not getting that.

Andy Psarianos

No, I-

Dr. Mario Trono

I'm not getting that at all. Slugger pig? Slugger pig or something, you said. What the heck? We're pretty far away from lice there, aren't we?

Emily Guille-Marrett

I like the fact that they're called grandads and gramfer gravy.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah, yeah. Were there monkey peas or something, right?

Monkey peas. I like monkey peas. Their little bodies curl up into little peas, I guess. But monkey, I don't know why the monkey bit. Maybe because they're curling up, I don't know.

Andy Psarianos

Oh, talking about monkeys, I got a good one for you guys. So what's a group of monkeys called?

Emily Guille-Marrett

A chatter?

Dr. Mario Trono

A barrel? What'd you say, a chatter?

Andy Psarianos

Okay. They're called a troop, right, of monkeys. Unless if they're misbehaving, they're called a barrel of monkeys.

Dr. Mario Trono

Oh. So barrel is in there, but it's specifically with misbehaving.

Andy Psarianos

Mischievous monkeys are in a barrel.

Dr. Mario Trono

They always seem to be misbehaving. I can't... Well, I imagine them all lined up like soldiers, but they seem so, I don't know, there's a real snuggle.

Andy Psarianos

But I only learned this because I was writing a math lesson for one of the books that we're authoring right now and I was like, and I'm saying, okay, what? I need to, okay, I'll put a group of monkeys. What's a group of monkeys called? I better look it up, just I don't get it wrong. And that's how I discovered it. But isn't that fun. So now I got to find a way to use the word barrel of monkeys in the right context. Right. See, that's when I think is fun. But bringing it back to the word of the weak concept, yeah it just seems a little bit kind of forced. Right?

Dr. Mario Trono

What's a grouping of words called, does anybody know? What's a grouping of words called, if it's a murder of crows, would it be a wow of words? Would it be a... I've got to look this up.

Andy Psarianos

Well, an organised group of words is either called a sentence or a paragraph. Right? What's a disorganised group of words is what you're asking. Right?

Dr. Mario Trono

A muddle.

Andy Psarianos

A muddle.

Dr. Mario Trono

A muddle of words.

Andy Psarianos

A muddle would be good, actually. We should make it muddle.

Emily Guille-Marrett

We're going to make it a muddle.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah. Who do we need to write to? Is that... Who are the language cops?

Dr. Mario Trono

I don't know. Oxford English Dictionary publishers.

Andy Psarianos

Oh, there's a great book about the making of the Oxford Dictionary. Jesus, something, I can't remember what it's called. I'll have to find it, but it's great. What a story that is, if you're ever looking for something fascinating to... A lot of the dictionary is written by a prisoner, believe it or not.

Dr. Mario Trono

That's interesting, the whole dictionary question. They've moved away from what were perceived as elitist. Well, they always had that position, if the word gets used by enough people it gets in.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah.

Dr. Mario Trono

Right, so microwave is a verb and stuff like that because just over time. And so, and you still got the guardians of language and Emily, they were probably word of the week fans back in the day, that weren't interested in the whole language. It always had to be phonics. And the guardians of the language, thinking that everything's going to hell, if we say that we're going to nuke it. Oh, nuke is what got into the dictionary.

Andy Psarianos

Oh nuke.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Oh.

Dr. Mario Trono

Meaning to microwave something.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Mario Trono

And, but other people sit back. Language is a democracy, you can't order them around.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Well, a very wonderful, I was going to say children's book, it's just a wonderful book, frankly, but it's lovely for children. A picture book called Lost Words. And that came about, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie, whose surname, I feel really badly, I can't remember her surname. Anyway, we'll find that, I'm sure Robin can help me find that. But they did the most beautiful picture book and it was all based on the words that were taken out of the dictionary because more words went in for the Oxford, I think it was, it might not have been, I think it was the Oxford Junior Dictionary, but one of the big publishers of dictionaries and they... More words of technology had gone in and a lot of the natural world, words from the natural world, had been taken out. They became the lost words, the words that the generation would have known.

And they went on a campaign and created this beautiful book that's got poetry with images from nature and it's huge. It's a massive book.

Dr. Mario Trono

That sounds wonderful. I've got to get ahold of it.

Emily Guille-Marrett

It is. It is the most beautiful, beautiful book. And I believe in Scotland, they even had a charity that made sure that every child that year got a copy of this amazing book, The Lost Words, the books that were being taken out of... That, because it was based on the principle of people not using them anymore. So sometimes it's the duty of the dictionary or the people behind it, to make that they don't get lost or actually, is it right that you have to take some out to put some in? It's a tricky, I wouldn't want to have that job. I have to say.

Andy Psarianos

I don't think, I don't understand how you can take words out of the dictionary. That doesn't seem right to me because you're kind of destroying backward compatibility, right? Stuff's been written a long time ago that used those words, is that now no longer correct, or?

Emily Guille-Marrett

Well, I guess it's when it's an abridged, I guess it's when they are abridged dictionaries. So this was for the junior dictionary. And sometimes it can't go, I guess, the extent. I don't know, Andy, I actually genuinely don't know, but I agree with you. I found this whole thing fascinating, but lots of technology words had to go in.

Andy Psarianos

I just have all these visions of people in these kind of wood panelled rooms that sit with lots of volumes of books and stuff that make all these decisions. And they're all old men with long grey hair and big beards, in my mind.

Emily Guille-Marrett

It's not like that anymore, but I love that idea. That one is going out.

Andy Psarianos

That's not a word.

Dr. Mario Trono

We did a segment called How Andy Pictures Things, because they're always inherently amusing, like this Voldemort character sitting in a wood panelled room with a sherry, going, we'll never admit that anyone nukes anything in a microwave.

Andy Psarianos

All right. Word of the week, have you guys changed your... Have you changed your mind, Emma?

Emily Guille-Marrett

No. Got to have context. I think words, I think vocabulary, there is a word gap. Children do need a rich vocabulary, but I say, read to them, talk with them and enjoy words. And I do have to just finish because I feel incredibly guilty by saying it, Lost Words, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, big fan of her so I had to say what her surname was. But yes, wow word of the week should die in its current form, but I feel invigorated and I feel that we should find a way of having something to take its place.

Dr. Mario Trono

Well, I think we got to get away from word of the week as a phrase. There's no way to replace it, because it's very catchy, which is maybe one of the reasons it's hung on so long. It's just a nice little set piece you can do and feel good, you're improving vocabulary even though you may not be. But you could just have something else called word jam and just see if you just say, okay, word jam, here we go. And then, why does the CIA say neutralise when they mean murder? You know what I mean? Take it away.

Emily Guille-Marrett

I think that is... I love that. I love that.

Dr. Mario Trono

Just jam. Set it up so it's an explosion of things, or what word shouldn't be in the dictionary? Any jam topic of the day, that'd be a way we could take it, I think.

Andy Psarianos

Go on Adam. Word of the week, good or bad?

Adam Gifford

Forget the good or bad thing, I think it's like a little bit, my rudimentary understanding of Shinto religion is that it can always introduce new gods. Okay? That was my understanding when I lived in Japan. So I kind of think, let's go for word of the week, but have multi... Just keep them coming. Oh, there's another word of the week. There's another word of the week. There's another word of the week. There's an infinite number of words of the week. Fine, label it however you want but as long as you're knowing why you do it, but I kind of like that idea that just, keep them coming.

Andy Psarianos

Well, here's the challenge for the next time the four of us get together. We need to come up with a word of a group of podcasters and a group of mischievous podcasters. Thanks for joining everyone.

Closing

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