Proper use of the English language

[Rhone Man]

It is slightly ironic though - American English is actually truer to the way that the language was spelled in ye olde days. If you read an original edition of a 19th century book or (as I found out) law reports from the 1800s, you will discover that they spell their words "color" and "flavor" and with more "z"s than you can shake a stick at. Not quite sure when or why the change to modern British English came about.

 

[Slonda828]

Rhone,

Are there any unique parts of speech inherent to the BVI? I've always wondered if it was neither Standard American nor Queen's English.

 

[burna]

Expert scoffs at millionth-word claims


By News Online's Amy Simmons

Posted 37 minutes ago

Language enthusiasts have scoffed at today's announcement by the Global Language Monitor (GLM) that English has acquired its one millionth word.

According to GLM, the technical term 'Web 2.0' - meaning the next generation of World Wide Web products and services - beat 'noob', 'slumdog' and 'sexting' to the million-word milestone.

But University of Queensland professor of applied language studies, Roly Sussex, also a regular contributor to ABC Radio, says GLM is making a noble yet impossible attempt to pinpoint the precise number of words in the English language.

"I regard it as a provocative and intriguing attempt, but I don't think it's succeeded," Professor Sussex said.
"I'm afraid when you really look closely, this is something which cannot be decided so cleanly."
Texas-based GLM says at its current rate, English generates about 14.7 words a day or one every 98 minutes. Thus the 1,000,001st word has also now been recorded - 'financial tsunami'. [Isn't that 2 words??]

It says new words must have a minimum of 25,000 citations with the "necessary breadth of geographic distribution and depth of citations".

Professor Sussex says it is likely there are somewhere between 750,000 and 1,000,000 words in the English language, but that deciding an exact number is problematic for many reasons.
"English is used not just in England and America and Australia and New Zealand and South Africa, but it is also a very important language in India and China and places like that," he said.

"So you'd have to basically somehow keep tabs on the language worldwide.
"In India and Bangladesh you can 'prepone' something. Now we know what postpone means, well 'prepone' goes the other direction.

"It's absolutely standard in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, but it's virtually unknown outside. There are 300 million-plus people in India speaking English - so does that mean that the word rates or doesn't rate?"
He says differences between written and spoken English also cause further complications.
"Rort is a good spoken one in Australia, meaning a kind of scam, but it's not taken on overseas, it's just one of ours," he said.

"You could find some parts of the US and Australia where Web 2.0 has been a common word for at least three, four, five years, so the fact that they reckon this is the millionth word... that's a real problem."

-----

I don't understand how 'financial tsunami' can be a word. The words 'financial' and 'tsunami' already exist, so doesn't this make it more of a term rather than word?
Otherwise you could put any two words together, like 'banana sandwich' and say it is a new word if it catches on.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

-----
I don't understand how 'financial tsunami' can be a word. The words 'financial' and 'tsunami' already exist, so doesn't this make it more of a term rather than word?
Otherwise you could put any two words together, like 'banana sandwich' and say it is a new word if it catches on.

@burna: If you check out the Global Language Monitor (GLM) website you'll learn that the company calls itself a global media analytics organization for the WWW (actually that's how GLM's President describes the company on his LinkedIn.com resume profile). Using a proprietary algorithm called the Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI), GLM tracks words and phrases as they are added to the English language. On the website, the PQI rubric for definitive word/phrase inclusion is not fully disclosed. Instead, the proprietary PQI is described in vague brushstrokes (quoted directly from the GLM website):

The PQI is a weighted Index, factoring in: Long-term trends, Short-term changes, Momentum, and Velocity. As such it can create signals that can be used in a variety of applications.

Outputs include: the raw PQI, a Directional Signal, or a Relative Ranking with 100 as the base.

There are two differing PQIs. When analyzing words and phrases in political contexts, GLM uses the Political-sensitivity Quotient Index; when analyzing words and phrases in any other context, GLM uses a slightly different Predictive Quantities Indicator.

Just because someone uses an "algorithm" to figure out something does NOT make it accurate/true. What a load of BS! One aspect that jumps out at me right away is the fact that the PQI grants special treatment to politically relevant words/phrases. What's up with that?

Because I was curious, I did some background-checking of the 3 founders of GLM: Paul JJ Payack, Peter Payack, and Rico Blaser.

• Previously, Paul JJ Payack partnered with a bona-fide language expert, Dr. Robert Beard (Professor of Linguistics, Bucknell University, emeritus) to found yourDictionary.com. In essence, the website functioned as a dictionary aggregator of sorts: you enter a word to define and the server would format a nice page full of info from Merriam-Webster.com and other dictionary websites. I think Beard was the one who started the "Word of the Day" email list which became wildly popular. At some point, there was a parting of ways, and Beard jumped ship to start alphaDictionary.com. Although I realize that Beard is being compensated through advertising on his site, I wouldn't doubt that, underneath it all, he harbors a noble intent to educate. Payack, on the other hand, is a different story. The GLM website flashes Payack's Harvard degree in Comparative Lit. as if it grants academic license to decide what words can now be deemed part of the English language. No offense to the humanities majors out there, but Comparative Lit. at Harvard is notorious for being an easy major. Furthermore, what kind of person uses his Harvard alumnus email address as contact info on his "company" website? Milking that Ivy League diploma, are we?
  The more one digs into Paul JJ Payack's (GLM CEO) past, the clearer it becomes that this guy is a business marketing executive with one goal in mind: to monetize a pseudo-scientific word count of the English language. It's a sham really. Why is the media giving this guy any air-time at all?

• Peter Payack is probably Paul JJ Payack's brother. His claim to fame is seizing the title of 2007 Poet Populist of Cambridge, MA. The mayor of Cambridge was trying to get some good press for his fine city, so he copied Seattle's Poet Populist program. Apparently, Peter won a weird election which consisted of people voting by fax. Unfortunately, there was no mechanism in place to verify that a vote came from a Cambridge resident. So what else is on Peter's CV? Arguably, his most famous poem to date is "No Free Will in Tomatoes": I place a tomato / on the windowsill to ripen. / Slowly it turns red." Seriously. Here's a link to his "faculty" webpage over at the Berklee College of Music -- I've never seen so many adjunct/pseudo positions on a faculty webpage...ever. He's published a number of poems. He coaches wrestling at a local high school. He sounds like an interesting, creative guy.

• Finally, there's Rico Blaser, the math dude. Most recently Blaser was working as a quant for Morgan Stanley. A "quant" is a numbers guy who helps traders balance their risk on a daily basis (among other things). I guarantee you that he's the one who stitched together the backbone of PQI over a few martinis. He's probably very talented at manipulating computer databases.

After investigating this GLM triumvirate, it's clear that the company is missing a founding member with legitimate insight into linguistics. Isn't that kind of expertise required in order to accomplish GLM's stated mission?

From what I can gather, GLM is a vehicle for selling Paul JJ Payack's book and landing him speaking engagements (see the bottom of GLM's "About" page).

In case you think I'm being a little too harsh, I'm not the only one who things GLM's English language word/phrase count is bogus. Read this Slate article by Jesse Sheidlower.

Submitted for your reading entertainment...

 

[garyfotodiver]

---

---

A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

Split from an other thread.
Please feel free to discuss the lingo here

---

Poor punctuation. Please read Elements of Style. Thank you.

 

[kelpmermaid]

I heartily recommend Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves for a humorous look at punctuation.

I really enjoyed that book as well. It was not an easy read, but there were some surprises.

 

[Rhone Man]

Rhone,

Are there any unique parts of speech inherent to the BVI? I've always wondered if it was neither Standard American nor Queen's English.

If you attend the basketball games in Road Town on Friday evenings and sit courtside you will certainly hear some words and phrases that don't form part of the Queen's English, a lot of which suggest a close affinity with somebody's mother.

 

[Diver0001]

Okay, explain how this works.

1 "We have got too many commas."
2 "We've got too many commas."
3 "We have too many commas."
4 "We've too many commas."
3 and 4 seem correct, but 1 and 2 are really the same and more commonly used by everyone from the pres to journalists.
We've, I've and you've

1 & 2 are identical except for the contraction

3 & 4 are identical except for the contraction

In your example, they're all possessive forms so grammatically they're all valid and semantically identical in this case. To me (contrary to what someone else said) these all look like simple present tense. I guess they could be thought of as present perfect in British English because the British sometimes use "got" for past participle of "get" but generally speaking most English speakers use "gotten' so I'm going with simple present.

R..

 

[300bar]

Poor punctuation. Please read Elements of Style. Thank you.

Hey, I don't pretend to be a MASTER in english.

While at school, I couldn't care less.
Who the FXXXX needs that lingo.
How could I know I would become a Mod. on :sblogo:

 

[Diver0001]

Call me crazy, but I think that American students could benefit greatly from a few years of instruction in Latin.

Nah, Latin is only good for picking up chicks at the monthly chess club meeting.

If you really want to understand English better you should learn Danish, Dutch or German. These are the languages with the same common ancestor and they still retain a surprising amount of the grammatical construction that you see in Middle-English writing.

For me, learning Dutch was like time travel, going back 800 years.

R..