English
The Matriculation for High School (O Levels) and Pre University (A Levels) were through the syndication of the University of Cambridge in England.
All Subjects were taught in the English. Students who were streamed into the Arts were imbued with the importance to master the English language in order to perform well in their English and English Literature subjects.
The works of Shakespeare ruled. Other literature required for the examination papers included books written by Geoffrey Chaucer, Joseph Conrad, John Milton, Charles Dickens and so on. Appreciation of English Poetry was really difficult as we are Asians and were clueless to the English history, culture and ideology of the Poet’s time. Old English with different spelling and incomprehensible was nightmarish even for the most able English students.
Students whose mother tongue was not English found this very challenging. We were encouraged to read, read, read and write, write, write to improve our ability. There were some students who relied heavily on reading the daily English Newspaper. They found out that although their ability improved it was in the wrong direction.
Journalish
I remember one of my English language teacher, admonishing students who relied solely on improving their English through reading the English Newspapers. He explained the Newspapers contained articles written by Journalists and Reporters whose English he defined as, “Journalish”. It is not the kind of English that students should acquire in preparation for examinations in English or English Literature.
Blogorish
And that brings me to what I intended to write. It is not about Journalish. It is about Blogorish. Guess what has happens to guys like us who blog consistently? It will not take long before we find that our emails, short messages over our cell phones and chats, contain words like:
- Blog – short form for web log
- Blogging – the act of posting on blogs
- Blogger – a person who blogs
- Blogosphere – The internet blogging community
and so on and so forth…
Here are a few more examples:
- Pingback – A system by which a ping is sent to another blog to notify that their article has been mentioned by you.
- Permalink – A link to a specific article
- Plugins – Small files that add improved functionality and new features. WordPress plugins can greatly improve your blog usage and interactivity
- Typepad – paid blogging tool by SixApart
- WordPress.com – A WordPress blog hosted free for you.
- Blogorrhea – unusually high output of articles
- Commentariat – The community of those leaving comments.
- MSM – Mainstream Media, or old media like newspapers etc.
- BSM – Blogstream media. from most heavily trafficked blogs.
- Blargon – Also called Blogssary. Blogging slang and glossary. What I am telling you now.
- Shocklog – provokes discussion by posting shocking content
- Spomments- Spam comments
- SOB- acronym for Successful and Outstanding Blogger. From successful-blog.com
- Blogiday- you get fed up and take a holiday from blogging
- Feedburner – a professional feed management system
- Haloscan- free trackback service
- Rapidshare- puts video on your blog
- Flickr – photo sharing service. Host images on your blog
- Del.icio.us – share social bookmarks.
- Blogburst – Syndicating your feed to top publishers.
- BlogHer – where the women bloggers are. At Blogher.org
- Digged – link posted on digg.com driving huge traffic to your blog
- Farked – link posted on fark.com driving huge traffic to your blog
- Boing Boinged – link posted on boingboing.net driving huge traffic to your blog
- Greasemonkey – a firefox web browser extension that can alter the functionality of any website using specific scripts.
- CMS – short for Content management system. software used to publish and manage websites.
Speaking Blogorish
Now, just for the heck of it, imagine what a non-Blogger might make out from overhearing a conversation between two Bloggers speaking Blogorish. And the conversation went like this?
Blogger 1: Hey! You won’t believe if I told you I was Farked by Greasemonkey. Yeah! I had to get plugin with Haloscan and it could only be done on Blogiday.
Blogger 2: Why didn’t you WordPress it?
Blogger 1: No, I was advised to use Typepad. Don’t you know how it is with BlogHer? When it comes, it comes with such a Blogburst.
Blogger 2: CMS it dear!
Blogger 1: Well, I tried Feedburner and guess what happened?
Blogger 2: You got Boing Boinged?
Blogger 1: How I wish but No!, I was spommented and invaded by Blogroaches. I nearly had Blogorrhea. Gosh! I was in a state of shocklog and frantically reported it to the Commentariat.
Blogger 2: You are really a SOB!
Blogger 1: Blargon!!!
Blogger 2: Do you prefer MSM or BSM?
Blogger 1: Actually, I prefer being Digged. It’s like a Pingback you know.
Blogger 2: I see, since you prefer that, then you should get Permalinked.
Blogger 1: I am happy with FlickR, it’s Del.icio.us and we are able to RapidShare.
