Usage

Words wax and wane. Words that were once in popular usage may descend into disuse as new words come along - their use increasing with each passing year. Then they too may become unfashionable and fade into obscurity. Furthermore, it seems indisputable to me that the use of words will often reflect fundamental aspects of human society at any particular time - just like our art, our architecture, our fashions or our music.

You can easily imagine that before the mid nineteen twenties, the word "television" was unheard of but then its use grew exponentially, reaching its zenith in 1996. It's the same with the word "laptop". Before 1980 it hardly existed at all but then its use began to storm upwards and that is still increasing.

How do I know these things? Well, I have been checking out a relatively new  facility we can all access in Google. Type into Google the word "define" and then follow this with the word you wish to research. Click "Enter" and then, if your word is in the Google store, you will see it defined followed by a light grey arrow pointing downwards for more information about the word.

At the bottom you will see a usage graph and if you click on this you will get to the Google Ngram Viewer where you can see usage results in more detail. It's fascinating but it's mostly about published words - not the more difficult to quantify oral use of language.

I thought I would check out some more words, looking at declines and inclines. between 1800 and 2012. Here we go:-

"fantasy"

 "goodness":-

 "kindness":-

 "Muslim":-

 "obedience":-

 "professional":-

 "turmoil":-

 And last but not least, "blogger":-

As I suggested before, we can read things into language use through the ages. The words we choose to employ speak of who we are. You could argue on this basis that there is more turmoil in the world today, more fantasy too but less kindness and goodness. Two words I didn't illustrate in this post were "love" and "family". It's nice to observe that the frequency of these words has remained pretty consistent through the last two hundred years. Why not check out some words that interest you? Do you think their use will be up or down?

Trying

As a gesture of international goodwill, I am trying to  make a picture for my favourite German blogger - Ms Meike Riley from Ludwigsburg, Baden Württemberg. As she is a foxy lady, she naturally wants a picture of a fox 

It's not easy. I am referring to a photo of Fred Fox who used to visit our garden until his health visibly deteriorated - before no doubt he shuffled off his mortal and travelled to Fox Heaven.

First of all, I drew an outline of Fred. Then very carefully I used masking tape to cover his shape...

Then I washed over the masking tape and did my best to produce a textured garden lawn background before drying the picture and removing the masking tape...

Now I was ready to start on Fred. Please remember that I am not trying to reproduce the photograph in paint. My final picture will be an artistic interpretation of the base image. Even so I found myself really concentrating on Fred's shape. I was thinking about his limbs and muscles as well as what was going on with his hind legs. It wasn;t easy.

I learnt a lot by attempting this picture but I am not entirely happy with it - the relative positions and shapes of the ears, the delicate detail of the eyes, the lighting of the fur from the left. I think I can do better so what I am showing you now is  just a first draft...

On Thursday or Friday, I plan to try again. Maybe next time I will dispense with the grassy background and just plant Fred on plain paper. As you can see... I am, as my mother often said, trying.

Bonjour!

Allo! Salut! Coucou! Bonjour La France!

Regular visitors to this humble Yorkshire blog may already be wondering why this post has begun with a happy greeting to our Gallic neighbours across La Manche (English Channel). Well, my jolly amis de Blogeur, it is all to do with this blog's statistics.

Regarding audience locations, Yorkshire Pudding's leaders have always been Great Britain (aka UK) and The United States of America. Other countries that have consistently figured in the audience top ten are Australia, Canada and Germany.

However, in the past month, the majority of page views have been from France - 24,481 in total compared with only 6,433 from the USA and  4438 from Great Britain. 

It's hard to know what's happening - especially as there have been no visitor comments from France that I am aware of. . If you are French and you are reading this post, please suggest why there has been such a surge in page views from your jolie country. Merci beaucoup.

I have read a couple of articles recently about Russian involvement in Western European politics. Some believe that British social media and opinion polling  were both infiltrated by Russian trolls ahead of our depressing Brexit decision. They may also be digging away under the surface to bring nationalist Marine Le Pen to power  in France.

I don't fully understand what is going on but it is not inconceivable that this somehow explains the puzzling numerical growth in visits from France.  Alternatively, a legion of innovative French teachers may be using "Yorkshire Pudding" on interactive whiteboards to illustrate the elegance and flexibility of the English language. Who knows?

Smidgeon

"Smidgeon" or sometimes "smidgen". I like the sound of that word but  rarely use it. However...

Late on Friday night, I ventured down to the local pub for a couple of pints. Over the years, without making prior arrangements,  there has usually been somebody there to chat with but on Friday I was sitting on my tod like Sad Sack.

Rose, the tattooed Australian barmaid, was clearing tables and she called across to me, "Having a good night?"

"Best night of my life," I retorted.

"Do I detect a note of sarcasm?" she asked.

"Just a smidgeon," I smiled.

In the moments immediately following, I pondered where the hell that strange sounding word came from. - smidgeon - and this afternoon I have just got round to doing the online research.

It seems it hasn't been present in English for very long. Usage can only be traced back as far as the late nineteenth century but before that nothing.

Most etymologists deduce that it came into English from Irish or possibly Scottish Gaelic. The words smidin and smuitín are used in the Irish language to describe small things like bits of paper or flecks of paint, little smudges etc.. It is very likely that the word smithereens also emerged from this Gaelic source. When you blow something to smithereens, you blow it into little pieces.

I would conjecture that the arrival of "smidgeon" owed much to two historical factors. Firstly, the Irish potato famine of the mid-nineteenth century saw many Irish people leaving their homeland to seek work elsewhere. Secondly, with The Industrial Revolution in full swing over here in England, the demand for cheap labour was enormous. Rather than heading for America or Australia, thousands of desperate Irish folk chose to seek their fortunes in England, Wales and Scotland instead. We had roads and railways to build, textile mills, metal foundries and engineering works too.

As well as bringing their muscle power, the Irish would have also brought their language, sharing it with the communities they joined. There are numerous other Irish words that have gained lasting footholds in the English language including hooligan, slogan, slob, gob, phony and brogue. Interestingly, like smidgeon their usage also began in the mid-nineteenth century.

The origin of English words is fascinating isn't it? Have you got any other  interesting words you can share?

Views

A young woman in a bobble hat sits upon a rock on The Bole Hills looking westwards to the Sheffield suburb of Stannington and beyond that to the Loxley Valley and Broomhead Moors. Several small metalworking industries were once located on The Bole Hills. Those men of old harnessed the winds that surged up the valleys to increase the temperatures in their boles and little furnaces. It wasn't easy to melt metal.

Perhaps those lead, bronze and iron men of yore would sometimes take breaks from their labours and sit upon that selfsame rock looking to the west, considering their lives and their futures and wondering about the beauty of our world. 

And then I walked to Slinn Street, Sheffield 10 close to where we used to live before moving to our present house in Sheffield 11. I took this picture of a house called "Mount Pleasant" which enjoys a commanding view of The Don Valley:-

Suddenly feeling the urge to use a lavatory, I nipped into "The Princess Royal" public house. Upon lifting the seat, I spotted this:-

Sheffield United is one of this city's professional football teams. The other is Sheffield Wednesday. As you may have already guessed "The Princess Royal" is a Wednesday pub. What could be more insulting to a sporting adversary than to advertise its existence upon a toilet seat? Perhaps this kind of toilet humour is a Yorkshire thing.

For "Shooting Parrots" Sunday Round-Up. Go here.

Wonderful

"Manchester by the Sea". What a wonderful film! Shirley and I went to see it as Storm Doris was arriving from the west. It was nice to be sitting snugly in a dark cinema as Kenneth Lonergan's masterpiece unfolded upon the silver screen and bad weather marauded outside.

The cinematography and the varied musical soundtrack were both brilliant - enhancing a painful story of loss and recovery. The central character is Lee Chandler played by Casey Affleck who bears a weight of sorrow. He had escaped Manchester to get a humble job as a janitor and handyman in a Boston apartment block. But initially the audience has no idea what brought him to this juncture. It takes a while for this to be revealed.

He is called back to Manchester by the Sea following the sudden death of his older brother, Joe. To Lee Chandler's horror his brother had  chosen him to be the guardian of his nephew - sixteen year old Patrick played by Lucas Hedges. Gradually learning to embrace this responsibility, Lee begins to claw his way out of the emotional hollow in which he has been residing.

Kenneth Lonergan has a short cameo role - rather like Alfred Hitchcock. He witnesses Chandler berating his nephew in the street and grumbles under his breath, "great parenting!" which causes Chandler to fly off the handle again.

I don't want to give too much of the plot away in case you get to see the film yourself. Suffice to say that as we emerged from the darkness of Screen Two, we encountered a couple we know and I was asked how I would score "Manchester by the Sea" out of ten. I replied, "Nine and a half" but on reflection perhaps I should have said ten. 

Casey Affleck added subtle depths to his troubled role. He was often brooding, angry, self-absorbed, guilty or  wounded - endowing the role of Lee Chandler with human vulnerability and confusion. If he doesn't win the "best actor" award at this weekend's Oscars then something is terribly amiss.

Spotlight

The title of this blogpost should be "Red Deer" but that would involve two words and since I embarked upon this blogging journey, I have only ever used one word titles. Anyway - Red Deer - not the four-legged creatures that roam about the Scottish Highlands but a town in the middle of the Canadian province of Alberta. Currently it has a population of just over 100,000 but back in 1901 when it was first given township status, it only had a population of 323.

The present citizenship mostly consists of white folk of European extraction (88.4%) and the next significant group are Métis people - descendants of First Nation inhabitants who mixed with the original white settlers (3.1%).

In just over a hundred years, Red Deer has established itself as the third most significant city in Alberta - after Calgary and Edmonton. It's amazing to think that such a short time ago it was little more than a river crossing. Now it has fifty schools, shopping centres, parks and industries as well as modern homes often set in spacious grounds. With all the greenery and trees you might say that Red Deer has evolved into a beautiful garden city.

Last week, I climbed aboard the Google Streetview car to cruise around Oldham, Lancashire but this week I am off to Red Deer to see what we can see in six equally random pictures snipped from Google imagery...

Red Deer Golf and Country Club

Red Deer River

Red Deer City Hall

Exclusive Spencer Street in the southern suburbs

The Riverside Meadows area - often seen as the toughest neighbourhood of Red Deer.

And finally The Club Cafe with its attached massage parlour. This 

is known to be very popular with senior male members of the local 

birdwatching fraternity... including Red from "Hiawatha House".