I was helping a friend with setting up her iMac computer
yesterday for genealogy and she said something that caught my
attention. She said, "I have to learn what all the genealogy
terms mean." That brought home a common problem with all
specializations; learning the jargon. Jargon is a really a
technical term I became acquainted with during my graduate
studies in Linguistics at the University of Utah. It is defined
as special words or expressions that are used by a particular
profession or group and are difficult for others to understand.
The main problem with jargon is that we often do not even know
we are using it. Take for example, the word "genealogy" itself,
as in "I am doing my genealogy" or "I am working on my
genealogy." What does that statement communicate to a non-
genealogist? And sometimes we wonder why we get blank stares.
The challenge is that there is really no way to avoid jargon. It
is present in every (I mean every) activity and profession and
interest in the entire world from skydiving to se