Newsletter Brighton & Hove High School GDSt
Issue 29 May 2015
Dear Parents and Girls,
There’s been great media excitement this week around the publication of the new Collins Scrabble word list. Lolz, shizzle and cakehole are among 6500 new words. Slang words used on social media, in texts and in colloquial speech are now available to Scrabble players. These include obvs (obviously), ridic (ridiculous), lolz (laughs), shizzle (form of US rap slang), cakehole (mouth), and dench (excellent).Other new words in the list reflect contemporary trends and events, such as twerking, devo (short for devolution, as in Devo Max), onesie, shootie (shoe that covers the ankle), cakeages (restaurant charges levied for serving cake brought in from outside), and podiumed (used at sporting events, particularly the Olympics).The new word list also reflects technological change with facetime, hashtag and tweep, and players can now add exclamations such as augh, blech, eew, grr, waah and yeesh to their game. Some of the highest-scoring new words are quinzhee (29 points - an Inuit snow shelter) and schvitz (24 points - to sweat).”Dictionaries have always included formal and informal English, but it used to be hard to find printed evidence of the use of slang words,” said Helen Newstead, head of language content at Collins. “Now people use slang in social media posts, tweets, blogs, comments, text messages - you name it - so there’s a host of evidence for informal varieties of English that simply didn’t exist before.” Some language purists might find this all rather depressing but I would say that it’s a reflection of how wonderfully flexible our English language is and without slang and informal English we would never have had the works of Shakespeare. Furthermore, the really exciting news this week came from the National Literacy Trust survey which shows that a record number of children enjoy reading and that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of children who read every day. Findings from the fifth annual survey of 32,000 young people aged between eight and 18 show that enjoyment of reading and frequency of reading are both at their highest levels for nine years. Long may this continue! Have a good half-term break.
Jennifer Smith
dates
Fri 22nd Dance & Music evening, 7pm; Sat 23rd BHHS sponsoring the Spring Festival at St Ann’s Well Gardens, Hove from 11am; Mon 25th-Fri 29th Half term; Mon 1st June Y8 exams start (continue all week); Hullabaloo Community Choir, 6:30-9:45pm Wed 3rd Y10 Geography Field trip; Thurs 4th German Exchange Info evening for parents (604), 6pm Upcoming events... Mon 8th 8B to Boughrood (8G w/b 15th & 8S w/b 22nd); Y9 exams start (continue all week); Y10 Art exam; Y12 Class Civ trip to British Museum; GDST Day of Athletics & Dance; Tues 9th Y7 exams start (continue all week); Y10 Art exam; Y12 EPQ day; EPQ briefing for parents, 5:30pm Wed 10th Y12 EPQ Day; Thurs 11th & Fri 12th Y10 into Sixth Form 2014-15 Issue 29: 1
sixth form
tasterdays Thursday 11th & Friday 12th June