Words! Words! Words!

For some reason the conversations at coffee these past few days have centred around words and language. In a day when language is changing so rapidly we can often lose the things that give a language its flavour - dialect, local idioms etc. We were talking today about safeguarding regional dialects here in Italy.

And language can also be used as a safeguard - which brings me to the purpose of this post. I am been discovered by spammers both on my blog and on my e-mail. Fortunately the blog spam seems fairly innocuous - selling various programmes etc, unlike my e-mails where someone has decided that I would be interesting in wife swapping and having affairs with dissatisfied married women. What the reaction would be when I swapped Laurent with some guy for his bored suburban spouse can only be imagined. And though I think I may be able to bring some satisfaction to that poor dissatisfied woman - yes I have delusions of triviality - I am really not all that willing to put myself out, as it where, to accomplish the task.

All that to say I am going to add word verification to my comments section so that spam is eliminated and chances of anything nasty or viral being transmitted through it reduced. I'm sorry for the inconvenience and hope its doesn't stop anyone from leaving a comment.

And speaking of "word verification" - as my friend RG mentioned a few weeks ago you'd think if they were going to call it that they would use actual words. I mean what the hell does "defliqit" mean?

25 novembre - Santa Caterina d'Alessandria