>Talking of our Coca Colonisation of the planet, there is the worrying
>report that the average 8 year old can recognise over 1,000 corporate
>logo's but could not name 1,000 varieties of native plants found in
>their neighbourhood, nor tell you anything of their growing
>conditions. It appears as linguistic diversity disappears so does
>the ecological literacy contained in these languages.
I don't think that this is terribly alarming. This is simply the result of
growing specialisation of language. The average eight-year-old may very well
not know the names of many plants. However, this doesn't take into account
the eight-year-olds who are interested in gardening and do know an
exceptional amount of names. The average eight-year-old doesn't know how to
count in Latin either, but I did, and I still can't tell what a clamatis
looks like. I think, however, the vocabulary of the average speaker is
growing.
- gLeN
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