Am I missing something – or doesn’t that make three teenage youths?

Perhaps the word ‘youth’ now refer exclusively to males in the Telegraph’s world.

And youths or teenagers, would suffice, surely?

It’s all part of a project to create a digital ‘fossil record’ of human culture by tracking the frequency with which words appear in books over time.

And as if to prove they’re no fossils themselves, the researchers have given their new discipline a name of its own – ‘culturomics’.

This word, of course, is not yet in the dictionary. Neither will your spellchecker like it, whatever form of the English language you use.

And when the luck deserted him, even Rolling Stone appeared unaware that it had a career-busting piece for its bumper summer issue. Instead an almost-naked Lady Gaga displaced blurb for the Afghan story almost entirely from the cover.

Although General McChrysal paid for the publicity with his job, he appears to have understood what he was doing, not during the time he enjoyed the company of a journalist, but in the days before publication. Neither he nor his staff objected when the profile was fact checked, a kindness that not all publications offer, of course. That means General McChrystal knew what he was saying and he was happy with it. Although he couldn’t unsay what had been said, he appears to have offered no clarification. No extra words that showed he was under pressure when he said what he shouldn’t have about his colleagues and allies.

And that’s what cost him his job.

According to reports following Mr Blair’s evidence, “To Kofi” means “to encourage the [then] United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan with easy promises.” Simple.

Whilst its origins lie with the Ghanaian-born diplomat, its application – within the coterie of Downing Street aides, is reported to be broad. Anyone who needed to be influenced was Kofied. From whole nations, the French or the Scots, for instance, to members of the government or opposition, to individuals in consistencies. Never since “You’ve been Tangoed” has a snappy verb possessed so much latent aggression. So have you been Kofied?

This surely calls for a spoof video.  Anyone?

The university says that such an analysis can be used to predict reading ability and that children who text a lot have high levels of phonological awareness, a skill that refers to the ability to detect, isolate and manipulate patterns of speech.

All well and good. All very interesting – although asking a child to read a book could perhaps test the same skills. The really admirable thing about the publication of this research today, and the resulting press coverage, is that Coventry University seems to do the story, or a variation on it, every year. Check out this Register story, Texting: Good for Kids, from last year, or this Guardian piece from 2006. Congratulations to Coventry’s PR team.

Notwithstanding that he wants children to speak Cornish, their teacher has a beautiful way with English. Rhisiart Tal-e-bot, who is from Wales, says: “Traditionally the language was seen as for academics or people with beards and the community of bards.”

The children, beardless and bardless, are the future of the Cornish language. Now that a creche is underway, some parents hope that children will become bilingual. With the UK falling behind in languages, perhaps that is a good thing  - although Mandarin is arguably of more use.

Mind your Ps and Qs

Cornish comes from the ‘P’ Celtic family (the British version), rather than the Q family (Gaelic). So words like Penn in Cornish become Ceann in Gaelic. In an odd computation, the Times tells us that Cornish shares about two thirds of its vocabulary with Welsh “and even more with Breton”, which presumably means that many Welsh and Breton words are one and the same.

Find out more about the Cornish language.

That’s no reason to dismiss Scots as a force north of the border, where 85 per cent claim to speak the language, mainly with family or when socialising. That’s sufficient for the culture minister, Fiona Hyslop, to declare Scots a living language. Derrick McClure, a linguist at Aberdeen University, says Scots should be taught in schools to prevent it dying out. That seems unlikely if 85 per cent of the population really do speak it regularly. Even most English people have three words of Scots in their vocabulary. Auld Lang Syne. Long long ago.

(* a disappointment)

If it seems odd today that the church should get rid of church, the later Jacobean church thought so too. The King James Bible compilers re-established the word in their Bible, taking the opportunity at the same time to replace love. They preferred charity, perhaps fearing loss of revenue.

The British Library reissued the 1526 Bible as part of its millennium project, so you can now easily get hold of some authentic sixteenth century English.

It reminds me of directions printed in the Bradford South billiards’handbook in the mid-1970s. “Alight Busby’s” advised the booklet. The famous city department store, by this time closed, burnt down shortly after publication

Passengers travelling between Devon and London Paddington this week were advised to more up from coach A  ”in order to alight at Pewsey as that coach won’t be platformed here.”