StrangeSights

• Children are using less formal words in their spoken language than they were 30 years ago with honorifics like Mr and Mrs no longer making the cut and mum and dad replacing mother and father. Oxford University Press and Melbourne University have published a list of the 307 words most frequently used by children which illustrate some of the differences in children’s language when compared with a similar list published 30 years ago. Also gone are Christmas, pageant and magic, while new words include TV, games, football, movie and food;

• Still on words and a UK comic has updated Shakespeare with an abridged reworking of 15 of the Bard’s plays into ‘yoof-speak’ - a combination of text and street slang. To Be Or Not To Be: A Yoof-Speak Guide to Shakespeare reworks such famous lines as “To be or not to be” into “To be or not to be, innit?” while The Two Gentlemen of Verona becomes The Two Geezas of Verona, Hamlet becomes ‘Amlet, and Much Ado About Nothing, Much Ado About Sod All. With purists in mind, its author Martin Baum says that he has been careful to “stay true to the original format”. As to what the Bard himself would think? “(I)f the Bard was living today I reckon he’d say ‘Am I bovvered?’,” says Baum on his website. “After all, for a man accredited with the greatest literature ever written, what would he have to prove?”

• Meanwhile elsewhere in the UK, a pay-per-view service with a difference was launched earlier this year. A crematorium in Southampton, UK, is broadcasting services onto the internet so people who can’t get to services can watch from afar. The reported nickname for the new service? ‘Crem Cam’.