Will "noob" be the one millionth word in the english language? - 2009-05-12 7:52 AM
One millionth English word could be 'defriend' or 'noob'
Quote:
The milestone will be passed at 10.22am on June 10 according to the Global Language Monitor, an association of academics that tracks the use of new words.
The widespread popularity of English as a second language in Asia has brought about the most fertile period of word generation since William Shakespeare's time with new terms coined on average every 98 minutes, the Texas-based group claims.
It acknowledges new words once they have been used 25,000 times by media outlets, on social networking websites and in other sources.
The terms it is currently monitoring which could take English to the one million threshold include "defollow" and "defriend", words describing what users of websites like Twitter and Facebook to do contacts with whom they do not wish to stay in touch.
Another internet word "noob" – a derogatory name for someone new to a particular task or community – is also in the running, along with "greenwashing" (what companies do to appear environmentally friendly) and "chiconomics" (recession fashion).
Paul Payack, chief analyst at the Global Language Monitor, said: "Despite having a million words at our disposal it is unlikely that we will ever use more than just a tiny fraction of them.
"The average persons vocabulary is fewer than 14,000 words out of these million that are available. A person who is linguistically gifted would only use 70,000 words."
The organisation first predicted that the millionth English word was imminent in 2006, and has repeatedly pushed back the expected date. Other linguist have expressed scepticism about its methods, claiming that there is no agreement about how to classify a word.
The widespread popularity of English as a second language in Asia has brought about the most fertile period of word generation since William Shakespeare's time with new terms coined on average every 98 minutes, the Texas-based group claims.
It acknowledges new words once they have been used 25,000 times by media outlets, on social networking websites and in other sources.
The terms it is currently monitoring which could take English to the one million threshold include "defollow" and "defriend", words describing what users of websites like Twitter and Facebook to do contacts with whom they do not wish to stay in touch.
Another internet word "noob" – a derogatory name for someone new to a particular task or community – is also in the running, along with "greenwashing" (what companies do to appear environmentally friendly) and "chiconomics" (recession fashion).
Paul Payack, chief analyst at the Global Language Monitor, said: "Despite having a million words at our disposal it is unlikely that we will ever use more than just a tiny fraction of them.
"The average persons vocabulary is fewer than 14,000 words out of these million that are available. A person who is linguistically gifted would only use 70,000 words."
The organisation first predicted that the millionth English word was imminent in 2006, and has repeatedly pushed back the expected date. Other linguist have expressed scepticism about its methods, claiming that there is no agreement about how to classify a word.
