Comments on: What’s the one millionth word, Noob?

By: alan

alan — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:36:29 +0000

No, we need media on the demedia subject, but we have to demedia the usual media fare.

By: Neil

Neil — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:33:25 +0000

So, to understand you correctly, we are going to demedia the whole demedia thing?

By: Millionth word scam exposed - The Word - According To Me

Millionth word scam exposed - The Word - According To Me — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:04:03 +0000

[...] word scam exposed By alan Remember at the end of May I posted about the Global Language Monitor celebrating the immient arrival of the one millionth word in the English language? At the time I [...]

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 23 May 2009 04:16:27 +0000

Someone told me Indonesian is so lax in admitting words to the “official” dictionary that it’s basically a bunch of people going through newspapers and if it appears SIX times it’s included (Alan — it was Nathan).

JM — that’s a classic TED talk, and interestingly the best-regarded dictionary (OED) takes an approach similar to the one she’s describing, by trying to include as many things as they can AND trace it back, account for its importance etc. Also her geekiness level in that talk is an impressive 12/10!

By: alan

alan — Sat, 23 May 2009 03:38:17 +0000

JM – Thanks for the comment. That’s a great video. I love TED.com.

By: JM Reep

JM Reep — Sat, 23 May 2009 02:44:49 +0000

English passed one million words a long, long time ago.

“A new word is acknowledged after it has been used 25,000 times by media outlets, on social networking websites and elsewhere.”

What a ridiculous requirement. For a much better discussion of how fast the English language is REALLY growing, I’d like to direct folks to this video:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/erin_mckean_redefines_the_dictionary.html

By: alan

alan — Sat, 23 May 2009 02:03:29 +0000

Ah, thanks Michael. I was right about it all being bollocks then.

Still, let’s not let that distract us from the course of stealing the 1,000,000th word with demedia. What we really should do is demedia this whole story, but that would be no fun.

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 23 May 2009 01:59:03 +0000

Language Log debunks the millionth word thing quite well http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=972Basically it seems that the whole thing is a publicity hoax.