Quote from Caroline at age 4: "Daddy, do you know what I call dirty snow?.... "Smagla."
The word has stuck in our family. Dirty snow is smagla. One of those winter things that we forget about for most of the year but spring to mind with the first snowfall, as in, "that's a big pile of smagla in that parking lot, don't step in the smagla, don't track smagla into the house"
The word has stuck in our family. Dirty snow is smagla. One of those winter things that we forget about for most of the year but spring to mind with the first snowfall, as in, "that's a big pile of smagla in that parking lot, don't step in the smagla, don't track smagla into the house"
Caroline never explained where she got the idea for the word. An explanation may be found if we ever learn more about her childhood encounters with elves. The dictionary of Primitive Elvish hints that smagla may be the ancient root of the elf word "magla" meaning "stained" or "stain". Hmmm, Stained/dirty dirty/stained, there has to be a connection.
If the word ever spreads and linguists want to know it's origin, it came from the mind of Caroline around 1996. This is a pic of her at age 9 in Alaska. She's in front of the toe of Exit Glacier and a large slug of smagla, just outside Seward, Alaska.
If the word ever spreads and linguists want to know it's origin, it came from the mind of Caroline around 1996. This is a pic of her at age 9 in Alaska. She's in front of the toe of Exit Glacier and a large slug of smagla, just outside Seward, Alaska.
There is also a person named Smagla on Myspace, no connection. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=82857194
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