Posted on 12/30/2010 3:39:23 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Researchers at Harvard University and Google found that the language was expanding by 8,500 words a year in the new millennium and now stands at 1,022,000 words.
The rate of increase over the years is shown by the fact the language has grown by more than 70 per cent since 1950, according to the study.
The previous half century it only grew by a tenth.
But nearly half of the new words are not included in any dictionary and are dubbed lexical "dark matter". They are either slang or invented jargon.
The findings came from the computer analyse of 5,195,769 digitised books (approximately four per cent of all the books ever printed) published between 1800 and 2000.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
"The findings came from the computer analyse," which will also include that sentence in the next go-round.
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Who can refudiate such a finding?
Ebonics is not English. Remove Ebonics from the statistic, and the ‘growth’ would be small.
Who can refudiate such a finding?Are you demanding a recount?
Fo' shizzle...
Interesting.
I knew we’d passed 1 million English words. Hadn’t had a recent count.
Sad to read of print dictionaries passing.
My new college library was deliberately small due to digitized files. I told them it was a big mistake. I asked them what provisions they’d made to hide and protect forbidden books when the time comes. They laughed nervously.
“There is no such thing as ‘the Queen’s English’.
The property has gone into the hands of a joint
stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!”
- Mark Twain
The language is “growing much faster now” because before the advent of Webster’s Third International Dictionary, the big dictionaries were prescriptive. A word had to stay around a while before it became a dictionary word. Now if two people can be attested to have used a word more than once it is enshrined in the dictionary.It is part of the Deconstructionist mindset that says language is essentially meaningless anyway and expresses only power relationships between groups.
OK, I'm kind of kidding with those examples, but they do set the stage and give the flavor.
The argument could be made that the bar has been lowered.
I think I'll write a simple computer program that cuts and dices existing English words, reassembles them in new forms, and arranges them along a basic scaffolding of grammar. I'll name it "Moor Finnegan's Nuncents." That'll bump the numbers up.
Bah, ! d0 n07 kn0w wh@7 7h3y @r3 7@1k!n9 @60u7
K.
The English language would not exist were it not for Greek. It owes its alphabet, its writing direction, and a major portion of its vocabulary to Greek.
I like it.
If those are the criteria.
If that is the criterion.
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