to the grammer

[Homicidalheathen]

Language evolves over time...you can't stop progress like say dropping unnecessary syllables or sounds or letters

IM is the latest form of communication hell I used to find LOL annoying

I have embraced lol

and other im idiocies

Here is proof we need to stop the insanity

English contains more words than any other language on the planet and will add its millionth word early Wednesday, according to the Global Language Monitor, a Web site that uses a math formula to estimate how often words are created.

The Global Language Monitor says the millionth word will be added to English on Wednesday.

The site estimates the millionth word will be added Wednesday at 5:22 a.m. Its live ticker counted 999,985 English words as of early Tuesday evening.

The "Million Word March," however, has made the man who runs this word-counting project somewhat of a pariah in the linguistic community. Some linguists say it's impossible to count the number of words in a language because languages are always changing, and because defining what counts as a word is a fruitless endeavor.

Paul J.J. Payack, president and chief word analyst for the Global Language Monitor, says, however, that the million-word estimation isn't as important as the idea behind his project, which is to show that English has become a complex, global language.

"It's a people's language," he said.

Other languages, like French, Payack said, put big walls around their vocabularies. English brings others in.

"English has the tradition of swallowing new words whole," he said. "Other languages translate."

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The Global Language Monitor)

The Internet, global commerce and global travel have accelerated the trend by putting English in contact with many other linguistic groups. This has made English more rich and more complex -- hence all of the new terms, he said.

Still, Payack says he doesn't include all new words in his count. Words must make sense in at least 60 percent of the world to be official, he said. And they must make sense to different communities of people. A new technology term that's only understood in Silicon Valley wouldn't count as a mainstream word, he said.

His computer models check a total of 5,000 Web sites, dictionaries, scholarly publications and news articles to see how frequently words are used, he said. A word must make 25,000 appearances to be deemed legitimate. Learn about how other languages stack up »

Payack said news events have also fueled the rapid expansion of English, which he said has more words than any other language. Mandarin Chinese comes in second with about 450,000 words, he said.

English terms like "Obamamania," "defriend," "wardrobe malfunction," "zombie banks," "shovel ready" and "recessionista" all have grown out of recent news cycles about the presidential election, economic crash, online networking or a sports event, he said. Other languages might not have developed new terms to deal with such phenomena, he said.

Language experts who spoke with CNN said they disapprove of Payack's count, but they agree that English generally has more words than most, if not all, languages.

"This is stuff that you just can't count," said Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary. "No one can count it, and to pretend that you can is totally disingenuous. It simply can't be done."

The Oxford English Dictionary has about 600,000 entries, Sheidlower said. But that by no means includes all words, he said.

For example, Sheidlower said "great-great-great-great-great grandfather" could be considered a word, but wouldn't be in the dictionary. There's a similar problem with numbers, which may be counted up by their pieces -- "twenty" and "three" -- but not always as a group, as in "two-hundred twenty-three."

Part of what makes determining the number of words in a language so difficult is that there are so many root words and their variants, said Sarah Thomason, president of the Linguistic Society of America and a linguistics professor at the University of Michigan.

In the language of people who are native to Alaska, she said, there are dozens of words for snow, but many of them are linked together and wouldn't be counted individually. Does that mean, she asked, that "slush," "powder" and other snow words in English should be counted as one entry?

Thomason called the million-word count a "sexy idea" that is "all hype and no substance."

Linguists and lexicographers run into further complications when trying to count words that are spelled one way but can have several meanings, said Allan Metcalf, an English professor at MacMurray College in Illinois, and an officer at the American Dialect Society.

"The word bear, b-e-a-r -- is that two words or one, for example? You have a noun that's a wild creature and then you have b-e-a-r, [which means] to bear left or to bear right, and there's many other things," he said. "So you really can't be exact about a millionth word."

Payack said he doesn't consider his to be the definitive count, just an interesting estimation based on set criteria he has helped develop.

"It's always an estimation," he said. "It's like the height of Mount Everest is an estimation. The height of Mount Everest has changed five times in my lifetime because as we get better tools, the estimates get better."

He said the count is meant to be a celebration of English as a global language. And, while he says other languages are being stamped out by English's expansion, it's a powerful thing that so many people today are able to communicate with such a vast list of words.

[Scary Guy]

"web 2.0" is the millionth word. Whoever decided that can go fuck themselves. That's some horrible technology and shouldn't even be considered a word. Actually it's four "web two point zero".

They should have gone with defriend because at least it's a real word.

[TheOsakaKoneko]

Yeah, this is pretty absurd. "Wardrobe malfunction"??? SERIOUSLY? Ouch... That's just dumb.

Soon they'll be counting 'srsly' separately from "seriously"...if they aren't already.

No, people...no.

But the general idea is true. We use foreign words in English writing, first setting them off in italics, then over the years completely integrating them into the English language. You could easily come up with examples... "Faux pas" is clearly not English, but doesn't require italics anymore and is basically completely English now. How long before "anime" and "manga", "shojo" and "hentai" become counted as "English" words? In most other languages they don't do this. Japanese would be an interesting exception, perhaps...they don't use the English words as is, but they do use them in their language in katakana rather than translating...for example, "shaatsu" is shirt, "hanbaagaa" is "hamburger".

[Rev.Reverence]

Yeah, this is pretty absurd. "Wardrobe malfunction"??? SERIOUSLY? Ouch... That's just dumb.

Soon they'll be counting 'srsly' separately from "seriously"...if they aren't already.

No, people...no.

But the general idea is true. We use foreign words in English writing, first setting them off in italics, then over the years completely integrating them into the English language. You could easily come up with examples... "Faux pas" is clearly not English, but doesn't require italics anymore and is basically completely English now. How long before "anime" and "manga", "shojo" and "hentai" become counted as "English" words? In most other languages they don't do this. Japanese would be an interesting exception, perhaps...they don't use the English words as is, but they do use them in their language in katakana rather than translating...for example, "shaatsu" is shirt, "hanbaagaa" is "hamburger".

The English language soon shall be called simply, "Terran". (or 'Earthanise")

[hunhee]

Language may evolve, but we can at least hold ourselves to a high enough standard so it's not going to evolve into ROFLMAO, NP, LOL, etc. I freaking hate it when people are too lazy to type everything out. Honestly, it takes me longer to type out LOL than Laugh out loud.

I'm not saying I'm not guilty of it, and have used them in the past, but I'm just saying it's annoying that's what we've come to.

Edited June 12, 2009 by hunhee

[TheOsakaKoneko]

Language may evolve, but we can at least hold ourselves to a high enough standard so it's not going to evolve into ROFLMAO, NP, LOL, etc. I freaking hate it when people are too lazy to type everything out. Honestly, it takes me longer to type out LOL than Laugh out loud.

Hmm...

I agree in theory but...I don't see how it could possible take longer to take lol than laugh out loud...even if you have to think about it because it's not a common word if you don't use internet lingo, it's still only 3 letters, 2 actually, right next to each other. >.> haha uh yeah. XD

[hunhee]

Hmm...

I agree in theory but...I don't see how it could possible take longer to take lol than laugh out loud...even if you have to think about it because it's not a common word if you don't use internet lingo, it's still only 3 letters, 2 actually, right next to each other. >.> haha uh yeah. XD

Well, NOW I have no problem doing it, but before when I was like.. what the fuck (WTF) does LOL mean? I had no freaking clue.. there's other phrases that people use that I still don't get.. JFC <---took me a while to figure that one out too. I know, I'm old fashioned and I suck for not being "with it" or "hip".

You've got to remember that usually I type faster than I think. Instead of thinking in my head individual letters to make into a word, I'm just thinking the word and type it. So in order for me to think.. LMAO I could have already typed laughing my ass off. It's just the way my hands and mind have been trained.

[TheOsakaKoneko]

Well, NOW I have no problem doing it, but before when I was like.. what the fuck (WTF) does LOL mean? I had no freaking clue.. there's other phrases that people use that I still don't get.. JFC <---took me a while to figure that one out too. I know, I'm old fashioned and I suck for not being "with it" or "hip".

You've got to remember that usually I type faster than I think. Instead of thinking in my head individual letters to make into a word, I'm just thinking the word and type it. So in order for me to think.. LMAO I could have already typed laughing my ass off. It's just the way my hands and mind have been trained.

haha I get your point, definitely...I'm in administration too. I wouldn't quite say I type faster than I <i>think</i> but I definitely type faster than I would if I actually had to think of each letter. I was just pointing out your kinda blatant exaggeration. The point is clear though. I'm just being a pain.

[Scary Guy]

How long before "anime" and "manga", "shojo" and "hentai" become counted as "English" words?

"Anime" is an English word, short for animation. Although I guess it could relate to that French word too (I check my sources before I open my mouth :D ).

English word becoming Japanese gets shortened and becomes English again. That's kinda cool actually.

[Rev.Reverence]

"Anime" is an English word, short for animation. Although I guess it could relate to that French word too (I check my sources before I open my mouth :D ).

English word becoming Japanese gets shortened and becomes English again. That's kinda cool actually.

+1

[TheOsakaKoneko]

"Anime" is an English word, short for animation. Although I guess it could relate to that French word too (I check my sources before I open my mouth :D ).

English word becoming Japanese gets shortened and becomes English again. That's kinda cool actually.

Well, it's short for animation, this much is true. But that doesn't make 'anime' an English word.

After all, the Japanese word "arubaito" for "part-time job" comes from the German word "arbeit" for "work", but that doesn't mean "arubaito" is a word in German...they didn't even get the meaning quite right. It's derived from a German word, but it's not a German word. Much as anime is derived from an English word, but is not an English word exactly...but due to the commonness of its use, with increased commonness with each passing year, it's on its way to becoming a true established word, with a slightly different meaning than "animation"...I don't believe it will ever mean "animation" in general in English. In English, it is usually used exclusively to mean Japanese animation of a certain type...or at least, animation of that type made in a Japanese style. (Or sometimes any Japanese animation...but most people wouldn't use it to mean Disney, at least not in English. In Japanese, it would be perfectly acceptable to use it for Disney.)

[Scary Guy]

Yeah, you could use I don't know. Anime for regular animation and Japanime for Japanese animation :D

But still they added to that German word, which adding things is confusing. With animation they just dropped everything after the m and added an e (well that's what WE did anyway, I'm not even sure how their letter system works).

Although I'm sure the only time before that when someone used the word Anime is when they were interrupted but we'd have gotten to it eventually, American's are just lazy XD

[TheOsakaKoneko]

Yeah, you could use I don't know. Anime for regular animation and Japanime for Japanese animation :D

But still they added to that German word, which adding things is confusing. With animation they just dropped everything after the m and added an e (well that's what WE did anyway, I'm not even sure how their letter system works).

Although I'm sure the only time before that when someone used the word Anime is when they were interrupted but we'd have gotten to it eventually, American's are just lazy XD

That you don't know how their letter system works is evidenced by your claim that they added to the German word...they didn't. 'a ru ba i to' is the closest you can come to saying 'arbeit' in Japanese...there are no standalone consonants (except 'n') so every consonant needs a vowel. Hence arbeit becomes arubaito. Nothing added.

This is not an argument we will come to a conclusion on if you actually think anime is an English word, but I don't mind agreeing to disagree. But I still think anime in English pretty much just means Japanese animation.

[Rev.Reverence]

That you don't know how their letter system works is evidenced by your claim that they added to the German word...they didn't. 'a ru ba i to' is the closest you can come to saying 'arbeit' in Japanese...there are no standalone consonants (except 'n') so every consonant needs a vowel. Hence arbeit becomes arubaito. Nothing added.

This is not an argument we will come to a conclusion on if you actually think anime is an English word, but I don't mind agreeing to disagree. But I still think anime in English pretty much just means Japanese animation.

*John Wayne voice*

I'll settle this...AmeriCAN style...

...anime is in fact not an English word, nor is ain't...these are AMERICAN WORDS....& to stop any further arguments...I now annex every word ever uttered from the mouth of man as a defacto Amreican word...and whilst I am at it...this planet is now to be referred to as The United Countries Of America.

[TheOsakaKoneko]

*John Wayne voice*

I'll settle this...AmeriCAN style...

...anime is in fact not an English word, nor is ain't...these are AMERICAN WORDS....& to stop any further arguments...I now annex every word ever uttered from the mouth of man as a defacto Amreican word...and whilst I am at it...this planet is now to be referred to as The United Countries Of America.

[Rev.Reverence]

...wha'...I'm just Prophecisin'...