An Exultation of Larks

An Exultation of Larks

KBPS.org recently held a contest for collective nouns for “A Way with Words.” The title phrase is one of the winners of such contest. Year has passed before I was re-introducing to collective nouns. As far as I can remember, one can consider me a logophile when I was in sixth grade. At first, I find delight in spelling polysyllabic words that no one tends to use or hear. In the years to come, I was impelled that knowing vocabularies will help one person survive in the corporate world.

Refocus on collective nouns…. I can remember come examples: bouquet of flowers, flock of geese, gang of elks, and tribe of monkeys. I find the exultation of larks exquisite. One might say that the use of collective nouns is scarce in the mainstream language. In fact, when I listen to commercial radio stations and local TV stations, the usage of language are on the process of dumbing down (I emboldened commercial because NPR is station with IQ and the only sensible station in the Frequency Modulation). One plausible premise is that they mostly cater to people with a reading level of a 3^rd grade. I do not denigrate the 3^rd graders. In fact I flatter them because their language level is being used by college graduates in the media for the sake of global understanding. As a result, the consequence is dumbing down.

In the spirit of Halloween, maybe this is the time to fear for our language. Maybe this it that people should promote the garnishment of sophisticated language in a moderate level. I would rather take the risk of being called a pompous smart-mouth, than to be in the lines of dumb and dumber. Perhaps, such are the possible times when the larks may exult.