Where intellectualism, religion, and randomness coalesce. Will they form something new?

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

New words.. recognized!!

I'm alive, I'm alive. Don't worry folks, as bad as things may get at times (not that they get too bad), I won't leave you.

I sometimes have discussions about language and its dynamic properties... namely neologisms. They're things that some people cannot stand. People will act as if the sky going to fall, and humans will turn into slobbering sex-crazed animals that can't "get some." Well... I think they suck. A lot. And they're wrong.

To rub it in the face, here is a list of top-10 non-dictionary words. http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/favorite.htm

Finally, people from a dictionary company recognize that language is DYNAMIC!! (OK, so the OED has done this for years now) and not static.

I use a number of words on that list, as well as words that I made up on my own. I don't feel dumb, or sex-crazed, or whatever.

It even applies to low-vocabulary languages (average high-level vocab is no more than 10,000 spoken words, 4000-6000 written words) like Chinese, which, for all the supposed monolithicness of it, can change very rapidly without losing the Chinese-ness.

Language is not a monolithic idea. If it was, we'd be constantly decrying, depending on how far we go back, the:
a. Spliittng of Indo-European
b. Influx of Semitic influences
c. Further splitting of post-split Indo-European
d. Further influx of "autochthonous" languages, especially in Greece, Italy, India, and Northern Europe. (words like "keel" and "sheep.")
...
...
aa. Influx of Latin into Brythonic Gaelic
ab. Transformation of Latin
ac. Influx of Saxon and Angle into Latin and Celtic
...
bb. Influx of Norman into Anglo-Saxon
...
...
dd. Convergence of barious dialects of Middle English into a more uniform English
...
ff. New Internet-lingo.

and so on ad nauseam. It's endliess. Get a life.

Grammar nazis suck too. They love to change the topic by pointing out grammatical mistakes. But... I love them anyways. I want them to have my babies.