English To Hit 1 Million Words In 2009

Scarcely has the new year begun before the calendar pages start filling up with lunch dates promised in Christmas cards and notes-to-self about next time, seriously, getting an earlier start on holiday gift shopping.

But from The Economist comes a reminder of a notable date of an altogether higher order. Is your stylus poised?

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[Name Not In Use]

English is like the USA it welcomes everyone (mostly). What a kewl language!
The world changes rapidly. So should our lexicon.

[AmandaBC]

"the USA it welcomes everyone"

Riiiight, tell it to the Muslim family that wasn't allowed to fly on AirTran just because of how they looked...

[AmandaBC]

"the USA it welcomes everyone"

Riiiight, tell it to the Mu.slim family that wasn't allowed to fly on AirTran just because of how they looked...

[Warmglobe]

Yay,,more words from the scummy side of life infiltrating our culture

[whatawebb]

And Bush has contributed 1562 words over the last 8 years by himself!

Words like:

misunderestimated

embetter

unthaw

machine-making

And More!

Without George - we would not be as close to the 1 million mark - Thanks George!

[walk0nwalls]

Strangely enough, the one that put it over the top: Rick Roll'd

[watchingthings]

Yes and what portion of it is actually useful for everyday use?

[gastoys]

Who cares, English is a second language here in the states.

Adios!

[AmandaBC]

Of course that includes about half a million words stolen from other languages...
The Japanese have 20 words for "rain." The Inuit have just as many for "ice." Same with the Yanoama (Amazon dwellers) for "green."

We have "blog", "emoticon", "flame war" etc...

Sorry to say it, but our language is among the least sophisticated on the planet.

[bubbuh]

Languages don't steal words. A language either welcomes new words from other languages or it doesn't. The ones that don't die. English is a very welcoming language; both in terms of words and grammar. As for rain: verga, drizzle, cloudburst, deluge, drencher, dew, mist, monsoon, droplet, sheeting, shower, spate, spit, sprinkle, stream, torrent, volley, wash, teeming, storming. I'm no expert on rain; but, each of the previous conveys a slightly different aspect of the "gentle drops from heaven." There are many other synonyms.

Perhaps, you should take take time to learn something of the language, you so disdain.

PS How many words do the Inuit have for tractor? Japanese is a wonderful language. If you would like to get an idea of how many non-technological words it's borrowed from English, you try perusing http://www.amazon.com/English-Loanwords-Japanese-Akira-Miura/dp/0804812489 . It's only a couple hundred pages.

[AmandaBC]

How many tenses does English have? Basically, three. How many does, for example, German, French, Spanish, or Italian? At least a dozen. That's the easiest indicator of a language's degree of sophistication. Another one is the complete lack of gender modification for articles, adjectives and pronouns. It only occurs in English.

Your example with the word rain is completely flawed. Please accurately describe the differences among the words you quoted. You can't, because, by and large, they're synonyms for light or heavy rain. The Japanese words for rain precisely describe what kind of rain the word indicates. Same with Inuktitut with ice or Yanoama with green.

Ultimately, I don't disdain my language, I've been realistic about it since I started learning my mother's language as a child, and then French and Spanish in school. But I understand that a typical American conservative like you must feel superior in each and every way, so you must delude yourself into thinking that even your language is the "best"...

P.S. Inuktitut has one word for tractor. Just like English.

[JAL12]

Wow, I'm speechless.

[larry278]

How many of the English language's million or so words will be considerded to be obscene? The obscene words are the most useful & the most commonly used words. WTF would we do without them? How many new obscene words are being added to the English language each year? The English language must keep growing to keep pace with a constantly changing world. English needs a new, vile expletive for each new technique, machine, process,etc. Most, if not all of them, do not work. One needs a growing vocabulary of new obscene words to deal with the frustrations of trying to use new things. It's really a damned shame.

[bubbuh]

Maybe, a hundred unless you count cowboy cussing. But, any sailor will tell you it's scatological phraseology that' earns the style points. In other words, any mo' fo' can say mo' fo'. But, a sailor might start with the Baleen Balls of Billy Bob Thornton and go from there.

[bubbuh]

Part 1

Oh my God, the French Language police are trying to invade. For those not in the know, the French have had active language police for more than three centuries. Known as the Académie Française, it issues annual directives banning and replacing foreign words which creep into France to pollute the minds of unsuspecting Frenchies. They have twice tried to ban e-mail. The first time they tried replacing it with some ridiculous phrase of many words. A decade later in 2003, they replaced e-mail with "courriel' in all official and publicly controlled venues. The Académie Française which has lobbied for years to keep linguistic imports out of common usage has managed to extirpate "le cash-flow," "le deal" and "le marketing"; but, "le dead-heat" and "le boom" have managed to slip into their dictionary.

[AmandaBC]

Bubba is still stuck on "freedom fries" and "today Baghdad, tomorrow Paris"...

[bubbuh]

Part 2

Cardinal Richelieu, yeah, the three musketeers' enemy, , founded the Académie in 1635 to "clean out the garbage from the mouths of common folk" and to rein in elite thinkers by eliminating the words needed to elucidate "unsanitary" concepts. It, of course, did not work. Language defies regulation. As the 19th century novelist Victor Hugo put it: "The word is a living thing." But,,the French keep trying. Up in Canada, the fake Frenchies, you know the folks who like to pretend they are not part of Canada, have their very own language police. Their activities - well, read about it yourself. You won't believe me http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2008/02/14/qc-olf-0214.html or http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19960413/ai_n14049684

Global Language (Uppity) Monitor is some kind of subversive group trying to force this Aryan concept onto English. I have a fifty year old English dictionary with 2.3 million words n it. The Oxford English Dictionary runs to forty volumes of very small print the last time I looked. However, according to GLUM, most of those words aren't English, ignoring the fact that English is a grand old lady of polyglot parentage who has always embraced any word with the salsa balls put a leg over.

If the GLUMs come after you, smack the schlemiels up side the their haids with panache and chase their arses down street, whipping 'em to a bossa nova beat.

[NoSillyName]

Sure, now that any and all slang words become legitimized as soon as they become popular.

[twisted-european]

Overheard over at Bush's: "Daddy, what's that book about?"

[bubbuh]

H.L. Mencken considered The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the finest work of American literature. Much of that book relates how gullible and ignorant country "boobs" (as Mencken referred to them) are swindled by confidence men like the cleverly pathetic "Duke" and "Dauphin." These scam-artists swindle by posing as enlightened speakers on temperance as pious "saved" men seeking funds for far off evangelistic missions to pirates on the high seas and as learned doctors of phrenology. Mencken read the novel as a story of America's hilarious dark side, a place where democracy, as defined by Mencken, is "... the worship of Jackals by Jackasses."

Mencken also enjoyed James Joyce's stories. Whether this was because of or in spite of the latter's tendency to make up new words on the spot, I do not know. What I do know is that a word lives and dies by its aptness, utility, appeal and its ability to morph with the times and its speakers. So, take you your bitter grayness of somewhere, enjoy some toad in the hole and mend your attitude. Popularity is only an evil to the unpopular, for sure, cher.

[bubbuh]

PS This was supposed to be in reply to NoSillyName. My apologies.

[Osorik]

yay more words I will never learn, excellent use of bloating the english language.

[bubbuh]

Hoses are smart enough to know that just because the pasture has a million leaves of grass, they needn't try to eat all of them. Elephants would have a different take on the same pasture. Most Americans get by with a vocabulary of less than a thousand words. That's okay; but, I wouldn't exactly be proud of it if I were you.