Hi fellow boundlings 🥰📚

recently my algorithm has flooded me with so many articles and videos about the ongoing literacy crisis. Which I think everyone here is aware of and I have already seen multiple discussions about that topic here, but it is still something that really alarms me. And then the constant (rather concerning) debates on social media, like some people claiming to only read the dialogue in books, or that time someone on social media accused authors or being ableist for using difficult words in their writing, or even worse authors who use more complicated words then being accused of using AI.

Thankfully, PB is a safe haven far away from all this, but still, reading about all of that scares me enormously. And it also reminds me of Newspeak in Orwell’s 1984 and how that was used to simplify language more and more and thus increasingly limiting people’s vocabulary. (Please correct me if I remember this wrong, since I read that book a good while ago 😅)

Long story short, that gave me the idea to suggest a little challenge to expand our vocabulary for those want to participate.

My idea was that everyone could comment a word or two (or as many as you want) that you recently learned about, and their meaning. That way we can maybe all learn some new words by looking through the comments. And by writing them down and talking about them maybe we can also remember them better.

I use the term new words rather loosely here, so please feel free to interpret it however you like. For example you could share: 📚 a word you recently read that you truly didn’t know before and had to look up 💡 a word you had never encountered before but could infer the meaning from context 🙊 a word you technically know the meaning of but don’t often use in your active vocabulary when you are speaking or writing (but wish you did) 🗣️ or honestly even just a word that you know and love but that is not well-known and that you wish more people knew about

Also, you are obviously completely free to write the definition in your own words, or copy from a dictionary.

I hope you like this idea and I look forward to reading all of your comments! 💜🥰

”’Only speak your own language to your child!’ is a common decree in much non-specialist advice about raising bilingual children. It’s particularly common in writings about the one-parent, one-language (OPOL) method. The reason commonly given is that it is confusing to young children to hear different languages from the same person. This is simply not the case. Children being raised in multilingual communities in places such as India will commonly hear two or more languages from a parent-caregiver, as different languages will be used with different people and in different contexts.”

From my anecdotal experience, it really is kinda nuts how even very small children can tell when you switch between different languages. The author does go on to note that the danger of “mixed-input” from a caregiver is that the child(ren) will hear less of the target language (if one of the OPOL parents are speaking a minority language).