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One millionth English word could be 'noob'
The
English language will celebrate its one millionth word next month, with
"defriend", "noob" and "chiconomics" among the candidates, linguistic
experts have predicted.
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.
sparknotes: 'noob' may become an actual word, much thanks to us interweb users
