It's that time again, when we look through our words to watch, often submitted by you for consideration in the Macquarie Dictionary. We are interested in hearing about words from all walks of life, be it from your profession, from everyday slang, from something your kids have said that you just couldn't wrap your head around, we want it all. This month, we have some words that have been floating around for some time like weeaboo and twofer, but perhaps it's time now to add them to the dictionary. We also review some new words, like the gaming term meta, and the new word for an old practice, humanure. And we look at one of our favourite types of word, the classic Aussie colloquial manner of shortening words. We've seen this before with things such as deso for designated driver, but have you ever sat down to a dego? Or better yet, a vego dego? We'd love to know! Let us know if you have any other suggestions. We are always happy to hear new words, no matter how big or small a usage they may have. Be sure to vote for some of these when we post them on our Instagram stories. See other words suggested to the Macquarie Dictionary here.

Aussie Word of the Week

The Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia is a unique tool for exploring and understanding the lives and cultures of Australia's First Peoples. It is out on 27 Aug 2019 but you can pre-order it now.

The Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi) people are the Indigenous people of north-eastern NSW and south-western Queensland. They are one of the four largest Indigenous groups in Australia, whose lands traditionally encompassed over 75,000 km2. If you live in NSW, you may have been to Gamilaraay lands – Lightning Ridge, Moree, Tamworth, Narrabri are all on traditional Gamilaraay land, as well as Nindigully in Queensland. The Gamilaraay language includes a number of dialects, including Yuwalaraay. It is considered to be closely related to Ngiyampaa and Wiradjuri, both found further to the south. Gamilaraay is pronounced ‘kamilaroi’, like some versions of the spelling. These spellings are considered interchangeable, with the people often referred to as Kamilaroi, but the language as Gamilaraay. The word Gamilaraay itself has an interesting meaning. Like many of the languages in NSW, it is constructed from two parts – the local word for ‘no’ (gamil) and a suffix that means ‘having (-(b)araay), loosely translating as ‘no-having’. This indicates that the speakers of this language use the word ‘gamil’ to mean ‘no’. Yuwalaraay speakers use ‘waal’ for ‘no’, hence the ‘wal’ in their name. It is an interesting way to distinguish between different language and cultural groups. The Gamilaraay language is an example of a revived and reconstructed Indigenous Australian language. In the 1950s the last fluent speakers died, and for many years the language was considered extinct. But thanks to the continuing efforts of Elders and communities, there are now language learning programs available to the public and resources for individuals and communities wanting to be part of the revitalisation.   Read more: Reviving Indigenous languages – not as easy as it seems (The Conversation)

As editors of the Macquarie Dictionary, we wear many hats. One of the tasks that comes to us regularly is to create lists of words for spelling bees. This is a monumental undertaking, and one which requires a high level of detail. First, we have the word selection itself There are many thousands of words in Australian English. Selecting those which make up the list for a spelling bee is a herculean task. (There, we’ve just given you a new word to add to your word bank!) We cover a huge range of words, which are quite easy to start with, but progressively get harder and harder. We have a database of words with all sorts of information – level of difficulty, subject area, pronunciation, whether the word has a variant spelling, whether it is a homophone, and so on, as well as information about when it was last used in the competition, whether it was in the Junior or Senior section – it’s pretty complicated! Studying for and participating in spelling bees are, after all, a great opportunity to reinforce the words you already know, but also, to branch out and learn about terms you may not already be familiar with. Then the words need to be graded Many people think that grading is simply based on the length of a word. There are many more factors we look at when deciding on a difficulty level. Some of these include a word has silent letters, double letters, an unexpected or difficult pronunciation, if it comes from another language, or whether the word needs a spelling rule applied. Familiarity is another consideration, but this can vary with life experience – a child who learns music is likely to be fine with crescendo, a word which would stump many spellers, and someone of Italian heritage would find passata and focaccia a breeze. Not so likely for a child of Vietnamese background, who would be fine with pho, and so on. There are also other "fiendishness" factors which come into play but they’re top secret! You can find out more in our podcast, Word for Word. But we do have some tips to help you while you're studying New words Every time you come across an unfamiliar word, you should look it up in the dictionary. Knowing what a word means, and sometimes its origin as well, makes it much easier to remember. Try using it in everyday conversation until you are comfortable with it. Long words Take your time when it comes to long words. Just because a word is long doesn’t necessarily mean that it is harder to spell. Many long words consist of a root word with prefixes and suffixes. It’s easy to lose track of where you are when spelling the word out loud so break it down into syllables and tackle it one syllable at a time. Homophones Homophones are words which sound the same but have different spellings like air and heir. This makes homophones one of the trickiest areas of spelling so make sure you listen to the sentence given so you know which meaning you are being asked to spell.

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