Language Museum Blog

We know that all words have origins, and place names probably have some of the most interesting origins.

When I attended school in London as a child, we learned about the history of the city partly through place and street names – Pudding Lane for example, was where the Great Fire of London started, and Rotten Row is a corruption of ‘route du roi’ (road of king). (If you’re interested in this subject, check out this website).

The Atlas of True Names is a set of world maps where the traditional names of cities, countries and geographical features have been replaced with words showing their origins and literal meanings. The results are surprising and intriguing, with London renamed the somewhat less substantial “Unfordable River Town” and Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, becoming “Sibling Love”.

As some language commentators have pointed out though, it’s best not to take the map too seriously – some of the etymology may be disputed or incorrect. As a way to look at the world in a different light and discover the fun of words though, it’s a great resource. And as the cartographers say:

“We wanted to let the Earth tells its own story,” Stephan Hormes, who produced the maps together with his wife Silke Peust, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “The names give you an insight into what the people saw when they first looked at a place, almost with the eyes of children. Through the maps, we wanted to show what they saw.” (Source: Der Spiegel)

Take a look at a slideshow of the maps here.

A final list (for this year): the New York Times Buzzwords of 2009.

A fashionable word, a buzzword is used to impress rather than inform. The words of 2009 are unlikely to become part of the popular language.

Particularly of the moment is the Twilight-derived phrase “drive it like a Cullen”, referring to the series’ Cullen family and their penchant for fast cars.

Other entries include:

aporkalypse
Undue worry in response to swine flu. Includes unnecessary acts like removing nonessential kisses from Mexican telenovelas and the mass slaughter of pigs in Egypt.

crash blossom
A headline that can be misconstrued, like “Shark Attacks Puzzle Experts.” Will Shortz is not in jeopardy; the sharks are just confounding scientists.

I’mma let you finish
Part of Kanye West’s interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards, a widely popular joke meme on the Internet.

swine flu party
A gathering held so people can be infected by a mild form of swine flu, in theory creating antibodies against more dangerous forms. Such a practice is universally discouraged by doctors.

My favourite buzzword (although it’s not on the list) has to be:

Relanguage
Term used by $300-an-hour consultants when $5 words, such as reword, rephrase or rewrite, would work just as well. “I think we can relanguage that to be more effective.” (Source: buzzwhack.com)

I’ll definitely be using that in 2010. What’s your buzzword of 2009?

Yesterday I posted the news that ‘Twitter’ was made Word of the Year.

So I thought it may be interesting to show how far its reach extends now: there’s a Twittonary, or a Twitter Dictionary, providing “explanations of Twitter related words”.

The content of the dictionary is user-generated, and users can also vote on the entries and definitions submitted. A lot of the words seem to include some variety on the words twitter and tweet, such as beetweet and neweeter. The president of the Global Language Monitor claimed language would evolve based on words from Twitter – let’s hope we don’t develop a language based purely on those two words!

You probably know that a ‘tweet’ can be only 140 characters long, so the dictionary may be helpful to you in keeping your message short and sweet.

It could also help you develop language skills – try tweeting short sentences like “I’m going to the shop” to get you used to writing the language you’re learning.

The end of the year is always a big time for awards – and the world of languages is no exception.

‘Unfriend’ was recently pronounced ‘Word of the Year 2009’ by the New Oxford American Dictionary, and now ‘Twitter’ has been named top by the Global Language Monitor (you may remember them from this post).

Twitter beat ‘Obama’ and ‘H1N1’ (the official name for swine flu), with ‘stimulus’ and ‘vampire’ rounding out the top 5.

Interestingly, the Global Language Moniter’s president commented on the wider implications of the word:

Mr. Payack guessed that “Twitter” took top billing in 2009 because of its effect on the way people communicate. “The impact that it’s having now is that spelling is changing,” he said. “It’s forcing people to think about what is a word, and how to present that word when you’re writing it down. Twitter will have an effect on language in years to come, if it remains as important as it is now.” (Source: Wall Street Journal)

Do you agree with Mr. Payack? Is Twittering affecting the way you use words?

Following my earlier post about the relative merits of unfriend or defriend, I thought it may be interesting to look at the other words on the shortlist for 2009 Word of the Year. Honestly, I’ve never heard of most of them, which means I’m either behind the times or they’ve made these up! Here are some of my favourites.

intexticated – distracted because texting on a cellphone while driving a vehicle

funemployed – taking advantage of one’s newly unemployed status to have fun or pursue other interests

zombie bank – a financial institution whose liabilities are greater than its assets, but which continues to operate because of government support

I love the term ‘zombie bank’ for the imagery it invokes – imagine going in to your local branch to be confronted with zombie staff! Based on the criteria for WotY though, I think my winner has to be netbook. It’s not flashy and it’s not fashionable, but I think netbook may stand the test of time.

What’s your favourite word on the list?

I do love announcements of new words, especially when they cause a debate.

The New Oxford American Dictionary has pronounced ‘unfriend’ its 2009 Word of the Year. All well and good… except I, along with many others, thought the term was ‘defriend’.

The official definition: unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

Whilst I agree with the definition, I prefer ‘defriend’ – it rolls off the tongue better, don’t you think? And it sounds nicer – unfriend is short for unfriendly after all.

I’m not alone in preferring ‘defriend’ – New York Magazine agrees with me, and even went so far as to ask Facebook which term they prefer (they don’t mind).

Do you prefer to unfriend or defriend?

Recently I moved temporarily to Spain and, with no previous knowledge of the language, have been attempting to learn Spanish.

Whilst I’ve had some success picking up individual words, and can already read some simple Spanish, speaking is my real ‘problem’ area.
My biggest fear is getting words wrong – I dislike being incorrect. This fear is very unhelpful in language acquisition, as you learn from your mistakes!

And as a recent study shows, conversing is essential to language development. A UCLA study found that activities that got children talking were more conducive to language acquisition than other methods.

Each day, children hear an average of some 13,000 words spoken to them by adults and participate in about 400 conversational turns with adults. More conversations mean more opportunities for mistakes and therefore more opportunities for valuable corrections. Furthermore, they also provide an opportunity for children to practice new vocabulary. (Source: Eurekalert.org)

Whilst the study focused on language acquisition in children, I think the findings can be applied to all language learning. Make the most of any opportunity you have to converse in your chosen language – and don’t be scared to make mistakes!

Bad news if your grammar is terrible – even monkeys can recognise your mistakes.

Well… sort of. Researchers have said that a particular kind of monkey are able to hear if the order of syllables in a word is “wrong”.

The cotton-top tamarins were first familiarised with two-syllable terms, and then tested the following day to see how they reacted to familiar and unfamiliar word patterns. The study found that the monkeys “looked to the speaker” when unfamiliar words were presented.

Of course, the researchers weren’t merely having fun playing with monkeys, the results have implications for humans also:

Marc Hauser, who was also involved in this study, told BBC News that the results showed how human language had incorporated memory processes that were not “language-specific”.
“Simple temporal ordering is shared with non-human animals,” he said. “This has an important role. In bird song or whale song, for example, there’s a temporal ordering to the notes and that’s critical for communication.”
And it goes beyond that. “In primates, this ordering is vital for learning,” explained Professor Hauser. “In tool use, primates learn from each other that you do this first, then you do that, then it’s that.”
Professor Hauser described how evident this innate ability is when a child learns language.
“As a child learns to use the past tense,” he said, “they may generalise and use a suffix wrongly, but they will never generalise in the wrong direction. “You never hear them say ed-walk instead of walked. (Alprazolam) ”

Read the full article here, or the full research paper here.

The first big spelling contest in the UK has been decided. A talented trio from St Martin’s School in Middlesex beat teams from all over the country to take the title of The Times Spelling Bee Champions 2009 at the Grand Final in London on June 23rd.

So what kind of word challenges did the winners face? Well, in the quick fire round (the team had to spell as many words in 2 minutes as they could), they spelled contemporaneous and rehearsal in seconds, no pause for thought. From the highlights I’ve seen, that’s what made the St Martin’s team winners – not only could they spell the words correctly, they could spell them quickly.

Other competitors were tripped up by words such as troglodyte and pterodactyl.

Compared to the Scripps Spelling Bee (the major American competition) however, it seems the British have a ways to go. Perusing the sample word list for The Times competition, I can’t say there are any words I haven’t seen before, compared with the final of the Scripps, which threw up zingers like schizaffin. Any kid who can spell that, let alone know the definition definitely deserves a prize. Let’s hope The Times Spelling Bee continues on to become as successful (and difficult!) as the Scripps.

I’ve posted before about dictionaries and the huge amount of work that goes into them. Now, you can get involved yourself in a new type of dictionary making – in online video form.

Wordia.com is “the world’s first democratically compiled, multimedia online dictionary” and is made up of videos uploaded by everyone from your average Joe on the street to the illustrator Quentin Blake. The danger is obvious – how do you know the definition offered is true and accurate? Wordia solves this by having the definition of the word from the Collins dictionary in text below the video.

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Probably my favourite of the videos I’ve viewed so far is the vaguely hysterical one from Nikki Grahame, a former Big Brother UK contestant (above). Although won’t help you too much if you want to know the proper definition of the word invention, it is amusingly overwrought.

Currently the site is asking for videos on words related to Refugee Week 2009, which runs from 15 -21 June. Entries include musings from The Archbishop of Canterbury on refuge and Baaba Maal (community). Upload your own video giving a definition of one of the selected words for the week, and you could win a Simple Acts journal.

Whilst it’s just getting off the ground at the moment, wordia.com could really develop into an interesting tool for language learning, especially if it goes global and definitions from different languages are added. Watch this space.