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Blogs

12 days of Aussie Xmas

Come with us on a journey through some well-known and lesser known Aussie slang as we count down the days to Xmas. Let us know your favourite or what you’d rather receive instead of say, six proud bin chickens. Read more…

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Fake news is here to stay

As a term, fake news seems to be a poorly understood one. When levelled as a pejorative against media organisations, it calls to mind Dylan Thomas’s definition of an alcoholic: someone you don’t like who publishes as much as you do. Pressed to define what makes fake news distinct from, say, poor reporting, the ABC’s language committee broadly agreed that that fake news must be deliberately inaccurate, designed to look like real news, and intended to mislead rather than entertain. Satire, in other words, doesn’t count. Read more…

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The language of Dickens

In my years as a dictionary editor I have found that one thing that stirs the imagination of an audience and puts a certain light in their eyes is the notion that they might make up a word that gets into the dictionary.  I think that what stirs them is the desire to make their mark and leave it for posterity. Read more…

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How did language develop?

We all know that babies learn language from their parents. Indeed if they are deprived of this language learning – as happened with children who were lost and lived in the wild – then they find it very difficult to learn language when they are much older and rediscovered. Read more…

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