Thursday, October 26, 2006
Linguistics
I took a linguistics class as part of my English major in college. It was such an interesting class although it is more on the analytical and technical side of the major's classes, which is right up my alley. It deals with the origins and structures of words among other things. I was reminded of it today when I was pondering all the words I use that were not part of the English language even 5 years ago and the words that we morph from nouns into verbs. For instance, we say "blog" to mean a blog and also the action of blogging as in, "I am going to blog today." The word "blog" itself is a combination of the noun, "web log." It's so cool that we create words to add to our vocabulary and how quickly they spread into commonly used language. Some OED (Oxford English Dictionary) snobs are not so impressed with the infiltration of their beloved language, but I think it's great that language develops as we do - although I do admit that it must be tiring to keep up with it all. What about "texting," "Tivoing," "telecommuting,"etc.? Did you know that "crunk," "abdominoplasty," and "therapize" have been added to the latest edition of the OED?
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3 comments:
What does therapize mean?
Supposedly, it means to take part in psychological therapy - I guess that's becoming so common, they had to invent a word to describe it.
On a related note, maybe all languages will merge into one? Like Stark in Ender's Game? SO many words are the same in Spanish - definitely any that have come about in the last 5 years - internet, email, CD, DVD, etc. They just pronounce everything with a Spanish accent.
And, the day you wrote your blog about things you are over, I had just been thinking about something I was over. Totally same thought line. But I've been trying to remember for the last few days what it was, and for the life of me, I can't!
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