Saturday, March 14, 2015

Go Ahead, Make Up New Words - TED Talks

Watch this podcast here

This talk was delivered by Erin McKean, a lexicographer. Her job is to put words into the dictionary. She says it is not her job to decide what is a word and what is not. That is the job of all English speakers.
"Every language is just a group of people who decide to understand each other" - Erin McKean
McKean points out that people are always encouraging each other to be creative, except in the case of words. There are certain words that describe different things and that is it. However, McKean says that creating new words is what keeps languages alive. She outlines six ways to create new words.

1. Steal from other languages. For example, we took "kumquat from Chinese and "caramel" from French
2. Compounding. Take two English words and mush them together (bookworm, sandcastle).
3. Blend words together (brunch, motel).
4. Functional shift. Change the way that words operate (friend is a noun, but on social media it is a verb).
5. Backformation. Take one word, and form a related word from it. For example, editors "edit" and bulldozers "bulldoze."
6. Take the first letters from something and push them together. "NASA"

We should keep making words because they grab people's attention and helps get our meaning across. We all can make words whenever we want. As long as they have a meaning for a group of people, the word is valid.

1 comment:

  1. This is very interesting! I guess I would never think to make a new word since there are so many words in the English language already. However, I know that new words are put into the english dictionary each year so words are obviously still being created, it is just weird to think about I guess. Overall great summary of the podcast, it was really interesting to hear what Erin had to say about the whole thing. It seem so easy to make a new word and yet I can barley speak the ones we already have.

    Thanks for sharing!

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