'Sonsy' campaign launched to preserve endangered American words

Fifty words and phrases have been identified as being ‘on the cusp of extinction’ by the Dictionary of American Regional English, which has enlisted podcasters to use them

It’s not quite as vital as the battles to save the likes of the Amur leopard and giant panda from extinction, but a campaign to preserve a host of endangered regional American words and phrases has been launched, looking to save the likes of “wamus” to “sonsy”, and “spouty” to “bonnyclabber”.

The list of 50 words and phrases was compiled by the Dictionary of American Regional English, a project that has been running since 1965, when almost 3,000 face-to-face interviews were conducted with people across the US to map the thousands of differences in dialect across the states. DARE has chosen the words it believes to be “on the cusp of extinction” and teamed up with podcasting platform Acast, asking its producers and presenters to “adopt” an endangered word or phrase and use it on their shows.

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