A staggering 90,000 creative youngsters have embraced the magic of storytelling and entered the BBC Radio 2 ‘500 words’ competition, with Manchester submitting many weird and wonderful creations.
Children across the UK had a go at writing a story of 500 words in the competition launched by DJ Chris Evans.
Lexicographers in Oxford analysed the use of certain words and names used to chart the most popular phrases of UK kids.
‘Mum’ took the top spot in the UK with over 115,000 occurrences alongside regional types including ‘mar’ – the Manchester slang variation.
However, it wasn’t ‘mum’ which claimed the title in Manchester, but ‘professor,’ alongside the top name of ‘Mike’, which appeared more than the top national names of Jack and Lucy.
Other words which topped the chart in the city included ‘poem’, ‘uncle’, ‘goblin’ and ‘toilet’ – indicating the wide imagination of Mancunian children.
Evans said: “I was staggered to find out we’d received over 90,000 entries for this year’s 500 words competition.
“The creativity of these awesome authors knows no bounds – we have dragons, monsters, wizards, space-ships – and some of these super story-tellers are even inventing new words. Inspirational, or what?”
From wizards and spells, to monsters and aliens, writers aged nine-years-old and under opted for a magical approach to their stories.
The fables also showed dogs really are a man’s best friend with canines appearing over 25,000 times.
Of the 10 to 13-year-olds who entered, many opted for a gothic approach, using themes of death, pain and blood influenced by popular dark teen literature such as Twilight and Hunger Games.
In a refreshing demonstration of how fantasy encourages children to be creative, new words such as ‘fabdabidabulous’ and ‘phantasmagorical’ appeared alongside creatures such as the ‘lumbagain’ – apparently a ghost who makes people dull and boring.
Have you ever heard of a ‘dulbodogfragonaffe’?
Well, according to the stories, it’s a very big animal with the head of a duck and the mane of a lion, plus the neck of a giraffe and the body of a horse.
New fiendish lexical inventions also included gadgets like the ‘shrinkinganator’ and places such as ‘Mirangodangowangolopitis’.
Characters such as James Bond and Cinderella have made common appearances, with football star Lionel Messi and athletics legend Usain Bolt topping the charts for sports personalities.
Vineeta Gupta, Head of Children’s Dictionaries at Oxford University Press, said: “Children are true innovators with words and language and have produced such creative and powerful stories.
“It is wonderful to see how children are taking traditional themes, words and stories and transforming them into tales for the 21st century audience.
“We poured the millions of words used by the young writers into our language cauldron and ‘magicked’ up a whole host of fascinating findings that will shine a light on our children’s language research in the future.”
The six winners of this year’s 500 Words will be announced live on-air on Friday 31 May at the Hay Festival – with each young author hearing their words brought to life by a superstar narrator during a live broadcast of The Chris Evans Breakfast Show.
Picture courtesy of Jeffrey James Pacres, with thanks.
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