The way we speak now
English dictionaries are groaning with new words,
while other tongues are dying out:
by Timothy Allen
Professor David Crystal, author of Evolving English, says vocabulary
growth is never steady but depends on new concepts in society.
What's in a word? The English language has almost doubled in size in
the past century as we are living in a rich linguistic peak.
A recent report concluded that the vocabulary is expanding by 8,500
words a year. After researchers from Harvard University and Google
scanned five million books, they came to a total of 1,022,000 words in
the language - including "dark matter" that will never make it into a
dictionary.
Professor David Crystal, author of Evolving English, says vocabulary
growth is never steady but depends on new concepts in society. "There
was a peak in Shakespeare's time around the Renaissance, another during
the Industrial Revolution, and another peak now with the Electronic
Revolution," he says.
While there are over a million words in the English language, most
readers probably know some 75,000 words, 50,000 of which they will use
actively, he estimates.
In comparison, Elizabethan English used approximately 150,000 words.
Shakespeare used just under 20,000 in his plays, 12 per cent of the
language. "Today, we know fewer words percentage-wise because language
has increased so hugely," Professor Crystal says.
While there's a theory that English has more words than other
languages, David Willis, Professor of Linguistics at Cambridge
University, says it is impossible to know: "Some say English and Russian
have huge vocabularies but I'm not sure if that says more about
languages or dictionaries."
Eskimo languages' grammar formations mean it's possible to express
what we would consider almost an entire sentence in one verb, with users
forming their own, such as "to hunt rabbits repeatedly". "Once you can
freely create new language, it has an infinite number of words," Willis
says.
"Though by other measures, it may have fewer words than English."
Vocabulary predominantly evolves through exposure to other languages.
Island lexicons tend to be conservative in terms of progression, such
as Icelandic. In contrast, our island's language is innovative: its
Germanic roots have been influenced by the Danish, Welsh and French
spoken on our soil over two millennia, and Old English is now foreign to
us.
But while English is expanding, the loss of linguistic diversity is
rapid. There are said to be between 4,000 and 6,000 languages, though
that is falling.
In February, when 85-year-old Boa Sr, the last member of the Bo tribe
on the Andaman Islands, died, the language of her people, thought to
date to the first migrations of man, died too.
"We'll certainly lose half of the world's languages in the next 200
years," Professor Willis says.
Fewer new languages are coming into existence. But in the past 30
years Nicaraguan sign language arose when the deaf community was brought
together, while over the last century tok pisin, the national language
of Papua New Guinea, has emerged.
Safeguarding language seems almost impossible. The French Academy has
long been obsessed with protecting elements of identity through
language, denying words such as "le chewing gum" and "le strip tease"
official status, though "le pipeline" and "le bulldozer" have been
deemed acceptable, on condition they are accompanied with suitably
Gallic pronunciation.
And last month Germany's Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer enforced a
strict ban on the use of 150 English words and phrases, including
"laptop", "ticket" and "meeting" within his ministry.
But Professor Willis says the rejection of single words has very
little effect. "Language changes and it is a futile exercise to try to
stop it," he says.
As for new-fangled words - the Collins dictionary added "Cleggmania",
"tweetheart" and "fauxmania" to their latest edition - some come and go.
Professor Willis says the verb "to google" is now so established that
it would survive even if the brand didn't, just as "to Hoover" is in
common use. Other innovations may vanish: he gives "cougar" a five-year
shelf life.
In general, the creation of new words is a sign that languages are
surviving: the Welsh language recently added the verb "trydaru", meaning
"to tweet", to their lexicon.
"If a language is creating words, it shows it's alive," Professor
Willis says. "If it doesn't change then it's dead."
- The Independent
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