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Bonus 109: Skipping rhymes, counting chants, and fortune-telling games - Children's oral culture | Lingthusiasm
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Bonus 109: Skipping rhymes, counting chants, and fortune-telling games - Children’s oral culture
Children have a shared culture that’s transmitted face-to-face in schoolyards, summer camps, and all sorts of places where kids do unstructured play with each other. These chants, rhymes, and games are known as childlore, and they’re one of the last vestiges of oral culture in our highly literate society.
In this episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about childlore! We talk about our favourite bits of childlore from our own childhoods, such as skipping/clapping rhymes, counting-off rhymes, and fortune-telling (Gretchen runs the MASH fortuneteller game on Lauren with a linguistics twist). We also talk about tracking down the sources for “All Right, Vegemite!”, a compilation of Australian children’s chants and rhymes from Lauren’s childhood, selectively choosing to pass on less racist and sexist versions of the rhymes, the relationship between childlore and memes, as well as research from folklorists and anthropologists on childlore around the world.

Listen to this episode about childlore, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord where you can share some of your own childlore, and see how much it differs from other lingthusiasts!

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