@soufre-de-paris sent me this article about how the English language is changing so vocabulary to describe nature is vanishing, and it's equal parts delightful and despair-inducing.

I especially want to draw attention to this part

This fits right in with my and others' observations that nature is disappearing from kids' childhoods.

And it is more serious than a symptom.

To give something a name is to make it a little house in your brain. Then when you encounter that thing in life, that thing comes to nest in its little house, and becomes a memory that can be connected to a thousand others.

If a thing has no name, it sifts and slides through the neurons until it comes to rest in some obscure place where you might never recall it again. Remember how cold and lonely it is to experience something without knowing the name for it.

A person without enough words for nature cannot ask questions about it. A person that can't ask questions can't learn, and a person that can't learn can't know, and a person that can't know...can't care.

Having a vivid natural vocabulary helps us orient our experiences in relationship to nature. Nature is the original to which everything is compared. It reminds us that we are connected to the natural world, and it makes us conscious when those essential natural things are missing.

Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about this too- how she sought to learn the language that was stolen away from her parents and grandparents, because Indigenous languages have so many words for natural phenomena that are absent in English, and as a scientist she found herself reaching and craving for these words, as a way to understand the world.

What if we started intentionally using words for the natural world that were being forgotten?...maybe even made some up?

Hmm. I'm going to make a list of things that I think need to have words for them. That will be a good place to start.