Posted on 07/08/2008 5:01:38 AM PDT by Coffee200am
London: The English language is set to reach a very important landmark within the next year – its one millionth word.
A new English word is created every 98 minutes, and the current number of official words stands at 995,844.
With the way things are going, experts believe that the language will cross its one millionth word mark within the year, more specifically 29 April, 2009.
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"English is different to most other languages in that it absorbs words like no other language in history. Language boils up from the people and we see this by the assimilation of words from 'hip hop', 'Hollywood' and 'Bollywood'," the Scotsman quoted Paul Payack, founding president of the Global Language Monitor, which came up with the date, as saying.
"Our calculations now show there is a new word created every 98 minutes. You can never have too many words, it just means there are more possible ways to communicate. We should have the one millionth word on 29 April, 2009.
However, he added that only a fraction of the words were likely to be used.
"But 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 newest word that was added to the language to take it one step closer to its millionth mark was 'e-Vampire', a noun describing electric equipment that consumes energy while in standby mode.
Word.
Words fail me.
It might take a bit longer...George W. Bush will be out of office by then. ;-)
Darned e-Vironmentalist!
Why that’s just discombobulating!.............
And here I thought e-Vampire referred to environmentalists trying to suck the green out of my wallet.
How trend-e.
Pity the spell check.
Mouse: A rodent with a big long tail that sits on a desk waiting for you to massage it. Some rodents have mutated and no longer have tails.
i bought payack’s book: “ a million words and counting.”
interesting,
but disappointing for a
“lifetime of work”.
Was “Obamanation” the millionth word?
I’m flummoxinated. Truly.
the only growing language. how come we cater to so many different languages that are NO longer growing? (spanish)
Scrabble players everywhere rejoice!
Three I would recommend be added:
Quone
Moop
Vorshtein
(Seinfeld Ping)
Here are a few more:
“T’was brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”
Play scrabble every day. Problem...I play with someone who does crossword puzzles. I’m now playing offense AND defense and ripping him to shreds.
The millionth word has to be “ginormous,” no?
All Brillo were the pasty loafs, did Proctor and Gamble in the Glade.
In a Minute Maid.
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