And the 1 Millionth English word is… a sham?
Today the Global Language Monitor announced the 1 millionth English word and the word is… (ta dah)… Web 2.0!
Web 2.0?? Is that even a word? And didn’t Web 2.0 suffer a horrible, gruesome death not too long ago?
The Global Language Monitor claims that 14.7 new words are added to the English language each day and Jai Ho! and slumdog, both popularized by the movie Slumdog Millionaire, just missed being the millionth words.
Linguists, everywhere, are crying foul, that there is no way to track exactly what words are added to English.. that this is purely a publicity stunt.
What do you guys think?
Here is an article over at MSNBC. And you can follow the Global Language Monitor on Twitter.
bob dylan – talking world war III blues (newport 63′) 4/16
“Web 2.0″ is a word? Yeah right. Since when are phrases, words? This phrase that we’re talking about is actually four [4] words: Web two point zero. English isn’t French. There is no ultimate authority. But that’s not to say that people or orgs can’t establish themselves as some sort of authoritative resource. But to do that, they have to prove themselves as such and be subject to criticism. The Global Language Monitor just shrank it’s authority with announcing that Web 2.0 is a word. This is actually a stunt to get people to notice them. And stunts erode authority. Other than that, I have no opinion on the matter. No wait, I have more opinions but breakfast is ready and I have my priorities.
Right on. Stunts such as this definitely erode authority. Good observation, muggins.
I am reminded of network newscasters who fail to tell us what’s really going on in other countries from day to day because network execs, sponsors and producers make them read fake “news stories” about programs aired on their own network. Case in point: updating us on the latest developments of “American Idol” contestants.
That’s NEWS?
Clearly, the network execs don’t trust us with real-world current events. OMG, what would happen if we actually knew what was really going on? In effect they are telling us, “You don’t NEED to be informed. You only need to be distracted and entertained, so watch THIS.”
No news is good news, apparently. Oh, they’ll go on and on about a fire or a bus plunge or plane crash, but never tell us about important decisions other members of the world community are making every day. WTF? “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! I am the great and powerful Oz!”
Fact is, if I cared to know about the contestants from some game show, don’t they think I’D JUST WATCH THE FREAKING SHOW?
To quote Marina, “DUH.”
Corporate news entities don’t want to spend the money for the reporters, so they go for the scandals, which are cheap to cover, and certain stories that are, in reality, commercials pushing some product. I bookmark refdesk which lists domestic and overseas newspapers in order to cross reference important stories.
Excellent link, it makes sense. My roommate watches network news regularly, but I’ve been supplementing that by watching whatever European news programming I can find on public education channels just to get a feel for what the hell’s going on here. Thanks, muggins.
-Kent
I feel dirty just reading about it.
Web 2.0 Is not a new word. Its an amalgamation of an existing word and numerics. But that’s what you get when the literacy standards drop to the point of mental retardation. Bring back the days of elocution lessons and correct spelling and grammer. We have let far too many rubbish words become accepted in to the language. As a “guesstimate” I would say that at least half of the new words in the English language are either adaptations of slang or plain and simple lazy speech habits.
Keep on rocking Marina
hahahahaha! rofl. looooooooooooool. “grammer”, yeah. correct spelling, uh huh.
i love idiots like you. <3
So glad I could brighten your day.
And I rest my case.
Web is already a word, so I think 2.0 is an adjective. But I agree with the ECentral Committee in all things! Slava WEB 2.0! Slava HOTFORWORDS! Socialist Realism Art to the forefront! Glory to the Gorby! Leninizmus! EsterDysonismus! What-ever!
What is slava
Slava is “Glory!”
Slava Sovietskiya Soyuza
Glory (to the) Soviet Union!
Music video I made for Russia
http://www.laserradio.com/4russia.rm
Crap! It’s all crap. How would they know if they missed a word? What about blixtgen? They missed blixtgen, didn’t they? Yes, they did.
I’ll bet you missed it too, didn’t you?
This whole thing is pure B.S.
Neat graphics, Marina.
Give Gorby a hug for me.
Like all contests, pageants, and awards it all boils down to politics. The web 2.0 people have been pushing for some kind of recognition for years now.
Good for them!
Who’s to say that there measurement is not accurate? How can ‘Web 2.0′ not be a word? Isn’t all words for the purpose of communicating a thought? Is the word Octomom, N00b or sexting are real words?
“Linguists, everywhere, are crying foul, that there is no way to track exactly what words are added to English.. that this is purely a publicity stunt.” – Message to all you Linguists. You’re not statisticians.
but CJ, it has a number in it! 2 is a number as with 0. To, Too, Two and zero are words! Noob and co. have evolved from other ‘words’ into new ‘words’, using words, not numbers, so ‘web 2.0′ has to be wrong in every way if to be regarded as a word! It’s looking like a Hybrid now that I think about it, Numword, Wordumber
but, it’s not a ‘word’ surely not!
Are not letters in any language just symbols put in order to create a thought? For example Kh is an Arab sound and there is no English letter for this sound , thus 7aram (meaning bad against God) could be spelled kharam in english (kind of). 3=ein which is a guttural sound at the back of the throat, not in English thus 3 is used…and so forth.
How about for instance, b2b is an acronym (word?) meaning business-to-business. How about if I offered you a glass of H2O? Do you not know what I’m talking about? I could go on but I think everyone gets my point.
Does anyone have some examples of common words with numbers in them that we commonly read?
// So just popped to the shop and asked for a bottle of H2O. She knew what I meant, she even looked at the bottles, but I think her frown with (WTF) hidden just beneath the surface on her expression followed with, ‘you mean water yes?’ said as much! She didn’t think H2O could be a word, as it comprises of two letters and a number! The Old Aged Pensioners, three mums, two teenagers and some van driver in the shop also agreed, that numbers are not words. One even went as far by pointing out that words can not be called numbers, either,…..no but, yeah but….
no one said that numbers are words. jack is right when he points out that letters and similar signs are just symbols.
consider this.
wrong: “a word x belongs to the category F, thus it behaves in such-and-such a way.”
right: “x behaves so-and-so, therefore it belongs to F.”
that’s a difference.
in early or middle high german times, “7″ would be used as (lat.) “et” (ger. ‘and’). as an abbreviation, if you will.
anyway. i’ll steal a sentence from an article[1] to try and get my point across:
“The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired.”
as pullum points out, “impaired” is an adjective in this sentence. but, “impaired” could also be a verb form.
thus: it all depends on how you _use_ signs and symbols. it depends on the structure. again: symbols, signs, make sense only when put in context.
in the word “d00d” (yes, it is a word), “00″ does not stand for “null” or “nothing”; it stands for a certain _sound_. “00″ simply replaces “oo”.
(language is based on sounds, not letters.)
[1] g. pullum, 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice.
you might be thinking of philologists. linguists have to study things like statistics and formal logic.
Hey, I was referring to whom ever said that linguist are calling foul. If the writer incorrectly stated who this was, then it’s their fault. I didn’t write the article.
plus …
they didn’t argue against that. i don’t see the problem.
linguistics is a very precise science. as precise as possible. and they are quite right. how could you possibly track the exact number?
the point they make about compound words is very good. it depends on how you categorize words, which definition you want to use to determine if something is a word.
by orthographical definition, “green house effect” is not one word, it’s three words. but then again, it’s a compound word. so what do we do? how many words do we have? three? four? one?
you really wanna argue against that?
I guess we are hung up on exact numbers as appose to a sampling. For example if someone says we sampled 1,000 people in a survey about if people like Miley Cyrus or not. Well those numbers are a good guess, yet not very accurate for they didn’t research all people in the world that knows her.
Heck even quantum mechanics is not exact but yet it’s very accurate for predictions and is a basis of much of our physics now days.
Maybe if they say we predict that Web 2.0 is a new word then how can anyone argue that?
well told
English words—Commands—shouts
…U n d e r s t a n d…RED of read=read of RED…
…president in my backyard, later..[centrist]
no one’s arguing against that. linguists just said that the claim that “web 2.0″ is the 1 millionth word is complete nonsense. and they’re right. they didn’t say anything about “web 2.0″ not being a word.
(language is based on sounds, not letters.)
(it all depends on how you _use_ signs and symbols. it depends on the structure. again: symbols, signs, make sense only when put in context.)
A-Ha!! Thank you! Now I can visualise the language of sound more clearly.
..just a thought, what would Shakespeare have to say about this Web 2.0 being a word of sorts, do you think?
This is simply impossible to truly calculate. This rubbish has got to stop. I am calling this one as I read it… “bubble-bibble-babble!!!”
I just read that in a Yahoo! article earlier today, and I think it’s ridiculous. What would be the 1,000,001th word? Web 3.0?! I mean that is more like a number add-on to a well known word. I think they should wait a little longer for a new word to come up.
When they put it in the OSPD* I’ll recognize it as a word. But first, they’ll have to issue new game tiles with digits 0 through 9 and punctuation marks on them as well as all the letters of the alphabet. Oh, that’ll happen.
*- Official Scrabble Players’ Dictionary
I think it’s just plain silly.
Really.
On BBC News Night, last night, Professor David Crystal thinks there is more like 1.5 million words already in use, he looked and sounded like he knew what he was on about too!!
The other guy promoting the millionth word from the states, mentioned they calculated ‘the millionth word’ with 600k words from the OED, plus a few other dictionaries added together and by his own admission said his method was wrong!! Just hype!!
The funniest part happened towards the end of the interview, when host presenter, Jeremy Paxman, noticed the count down timer was thirteen hours out!!! So couldn’t even get that right!! Duh! The guy was embarrassed saying he will look into it!!
Highly amused to say the least also left wondering, who are these numb nuts who claim all this, unable to set a count down timer and admit they themselves, are wrong in finding this supposed millionth word?!!? hhmmmm, feeling better about myself greatly for watching that. Thanks numb nuts guy
Web 2.0 had to die a gruesome death so we could be bombarded with, ta dah, the sequel, Web 3.0. What no subtitle? Maybe it’ll be known as the “Semantic Web”? Maybe it’ll catch on quickly enough to make it as the two millionth word in the dictionary.
Here are some interesting articles to get us ready for Web 3.0
I think Marina has been ahead of the curve and has been there for a while; Advertainment <– geek word?, user engagement, etc.
Web 3.0 Concepts Explained in Plain English
http://www.labnol.org/internet/web-3-concepts-explained/8908/
How Web 3.0 Will Work
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-30.htm
Definitely rigged, it’s a ploy to make you Google Web 2.0.
I demand a recount.This word has existed long before ’slumdog’ & others
Commercial names should not count, the name of a product has limited use as a word.
an issue for the tissue
clean-nix…klennex….clean!-it
The rag-man lost his wagon…private rooms and my world is private out doors, so, stay inside…toil-less999,998: N00b
Oh, these guys are behind the times badly!
Huh?
Word Number 1,000,001 is: Financial Tsunami
Not a word people, I’d call it a metaphor before anything else.
Where’s the “new word” in this? Think Neologisms!
So… if this is the 1,000,001st word, I tend to think that it’s a sham.
Any other opinions?
Web 2.0 is one of these words that are only useful for playing [buzzword] bingo. This word may have a definition, but too many people who use this word in public don’t have a clue what it means – like a former chancellor who once said that the government won’t impose a speed limit on data highways because that could damage the car industry.
999,994: Slow Food — Food other than the fast-food variety hopefully produced locally (locavores).
…[chives]…the bees love my chives and me too
I really thought that you were going to say that the millionth word was ShamWow.
That would have been hilarious!!
U make US(students) [work]
COOL
…Marina, I love the graphics…
[global] is a ball