Just so you know, where I live, people have begun to use the archaic words: thitherto, thenceforth, whither, whitherward, vex, trow, ween, anient, maugre, atwain, haply, enow and whithersoever. These were once common words in the English language, but have fallen out of usage until very recently.
I was really amazed by her. All the words that she said became interesting to my ears. I have learned a lot about english languages and dictionaries. I have also found out that the world are coping up about what is happening out there most especially about words that people created and gave it a meaning on their own. It's pretty cool that dictionary editors also pays attention to everybody who makes their own words. Thank you so much for all of these stuffs. I really learned a lot.
A word is "real" if one person uses it and the person he is communicating to understands it. It doesn't have to be in a dictionary and it only requires any 2 people to be in agreement what the word means. Case closed.
Next year I can give a TED talk about "What makes a word "real"?" and I can do it in 15 seconds. Then I'll turn over the mic to 80 other people who can give 15 second TED talks. And at the end of 20 minutes, you will have heard 80 people talk in the same amount of time it took this English historian to communicate to us what I communicated in less than 15 seconds. Actually, I would like to do a 15 second TED talk on efficient communication.Teach people how to edit themselves before they speak so that the world has a lot more free time to do stuff.
***** Normally I would agree with this sentiment--it does seem that the world is needlessly complicated--but it reduces the linguistic principles to common sense...which, as we all know, is the principle by which people thought the world was flat. Try to answer these issues with your hypothesis: -What does 'understand' mean? If I say 'dog' and you're thinking of a boxer but I'm thinking of my best friend, do I really 'understand' you? -What makes a word a word? What are the limits? Which sounds are the limits? You may have said in response to the last comment 'you're thinking of dawg', but then this raises the issue of phonology. Since 'dog' and 'dawg' are so closely related, when does one become the other? -How many people have to agree before it is a word? Or is it merely a sign? Or a code? What specifically makes it into a word? -And to illustrate that last point (and undermine what you said): If I say 'dog' and my wife and I take this to mean 'sandwich' because of some inside joke, but if the rest of the world thinks dog means 'canine', then (according to you) are we using a word...or misusing one? When does our usage become a word and when is it just a code? Or is it slang? (In other dogs, her dog is a bit more dogged than it dogs at first dog.)
***** I agree with what you're saying. Personally, I've always perceived Friend as being a verb, not an adjective. Clicking the Friend button executes the act of linking your account to another's. So to me, Defriend is the act of breaking said link.
Dictionaries are authorities on usage, not on meaning. In other words, dictionaries are expert on how people use words to mean, they are not authorities on what words should mean.
Maybe. Could depend on who is editing that particular dictionary. Certain technical dictionaries, or glosseries, should include a definite, precise meaning. If someone says "I have a million ideas on that subject," how many ideas do they mean? Perhaps, only many, or several. If a computer scientist says "there are a million bytes in a megabyte" [plus or minus], what does the scientist mean to say? It depends. Usage, meaning, and perhaps other nuances are all significant.
I'm vexed by how many people _refuse_ to use the comparatives and superlatives of many adjectives. I've heard many a person state that "stupider" is not a word, likewise with "pleasantest", for example. However, they are indeed words, being the comparative case of "stupid" and the superlative case of "pleasant", respectively. Moreover, "oftener", "oftenest" and "oftest", are also words which are convenient to use. There are myriad other instances of this; people need to understand their options with adjectives. Please thumb-up this comment so that everyone will know!
Damn, I misread the title as "What makes a WORLD real?" expecting some philosophical talk. Only after a minute I realised my mistake, but listened to it anyway, it was quite interesting even for someone who's not from an english speaking country.
Being a southern gentleman I have had to deal with certain people insisting certain colloquialisms are not words. I know "ain't ain't a word" was a common expression to hear in school. I never will forget a lady from a New England city had moved here when she was High School aged. She had married a local man and in college class she criticized her husband saying, "He says "yonder", Yonder is NOT a word!" to which everyone in the class sat pensively and didn't know if she was right or not. It is of course a word. It has been for a while but it isn't a word used outside of the South as often as it is inside. So, she was right to question its validity but it made me think. "If you can gain meaning from the series of clicks and whistles that I make with my mouth. Does that not make it a word? If not, then honestly, what is a word?"
#PrinciplesofCommunication Entirely, the verbal and non-verbal expression are evidently utilized along the duration of the speech which signifies that the speaker is effective and notable. Talking about gestures, she did portaryed a very calm and serene aura making the audience be directly gravitated to her and to what she says. She also delivered her speech in respect to the audience and she stepped it up a notch by providing jokes that are relevent to the topic. Overall, the totality of the dicussion was astoundingly perfect. It is an epitome of how communication cycles, from messenger to the reciever and by recieving feedback in the end. It was great.
I understood "multislacking" to mean multitasking but none of the tasks are productive (ie being active on facebook, twitter, reddit and TH-cam while your Excel spreadsheet sits untouched in the background).
Here in England, a new phrase has come into popularity: 'I was sat'. I hate it. Grammar, for me, is extremely important and colloquialisms such as these destroy correct language. There are professional workers such as: journalists, radio presenters, educated people in/on well respected papers/stations who are publicising this newly formed, but incorrect language. I can tolerate text speech on-line to some extent, but when people say it in everyday conversations, I find it dreadful. (Oh dear this is turning into a rant). I realize that language changes constantly and old words become new and vice versa. This is a good talk and I like all those words that her students tell her!
PtNyer Really, it should mean someone-picked-me-up-and-sat-me-down! But it's become known as 'I was sitting'. There's also 'I am sat', 'I want you sat down', it grates on my ears!!
I feel like a bit of a paradoxical (for lack of a better word right now) person, because on the one hand, I can be very prescriptive in my own use of words/spelling/grammar etc and can't keep from making sure I type everything 'right', but on the other hand I love encountering new words, new spellings, new phrases etc even though I have to fight from 'correcting' people. Language (especially the English language) is a fascinating creature because the more we evolve and change as a society, the more that language evolves and changes and grows. It's a genuinely beautiful thing to see it happen. Also, having read "The Dictionary Of Lost Words", I feel like I've gained at least SOME kind of understanding of how dictionaries are 'made', and that book opened my eyes to the fact that you can't just rely on one particular dictionary to be the arbiter of all that's good and right about the English language, because lexicographers CAN have biases against words, whether those are purely personal or a product of their time, and that can drive the contents of a given dictionary in any direction. These days, though, dictionaries (and therefore language as a whole) are less and less being shaped by a mystical They, and more and more by the general public directly. Just look at Urban Dictionary for proof.
The change is the only constant theory is very much applicable to language. Long time back, (almost 40 years ago), Alvin Toffler documented this truth in his celebrated work "Future Shock." Here, the linguistic expert Anne Curzan beautifully explains that in detail. A must watch talk.
Enjoyed this very much! In 1998, I worked with a team of technology innovators at a publishing house in Boston to develop one of the first online dictionaries (an adaptation of a best-selling print dictionary). Our thinking --way back when --was that the online format would accommodate the fluidity of the English language by truncating the traditional two-year print cycle. New words "voted in" could then be uploaded to the new format within a very short period of time.
Language is our tool for communication. I sometimes go clueless when I see literature students investigating "traditional" or sometimes writings related to specific periods in history that use words that 'does not mean anything to me' and interpret and waste time on investigating what they were saying!!. This talk is very modernistic in its approach. I think it is the right way to look at any language, not just English.
Does that mean that one day "should of" might one day replace "should have" (or be accepted as another writing) ? I see this error so often, even coming from native english speakers,and this trend seems to go up.
I was grateful to watch this video. I have questions in my mind about the topic what makes the word "real"? Why there are words that I know but it doesn't appear in the dictionaries? But thanks to this video, it answered my questions that word is real if we are using it and we know the meaning of it. I also learned that the words gets in the dictionary because we used it and we keep using it and the dictionary editors are just paying attention to us. #Principlesofcommmunication
Some words need a better opportunity to shine. Take serpiginous. It means slow and creeping, curving in a serpentine manner. Sadly, it never even sees the light of day, because it only applies to skin lesions, ulcerations, scars, etc. If we managed to make impact a general verb beyond just teeth (and it's one of my favorite verbs to use), then serpiginous should get that chance too.
Very good Ted talk! I would add that if the majority of dictionary editors and usage panelists are white, well-educated, and well-off, those identity markers can be pretty ~impactful~ upon the culture's idea of "right" and "wrong" language. Black children and bilingual Latino children are often told the language they and their communities speak is simply wrong. I like what she has to say about English being a living language, and that there's no better authority than the speakers.
What's also interesting is how these new english words find their way into other languages without being translated into the local language. For example, after living in Brazil for more than a year, "Selfie" is a hugely common word among adolescents, even though it derives an english words.
As I listen to this video and she is talking about words that have come into fashion and are discussed at a conference she attends yearly...I immediately think of the word "texted." I hate this word! You either send a text or receive a text...nothing is texted. I know it is commonly used both on television and the internet, but it drives me crazy. Just wanted to share my thoughts.
I believe on what she said that every word has a meaning, like the dictionary every word has its meaning. For once I haven’t seen a word that has no meaning because if it has no meaning it doesn’t make sense at all.
The Webster dictionary once made a mistake that lead to the neologism "dord". Oxford made up a false word "equivalescence" for copyright. So even a dictionary can lie in some places.
As long as new words or new usages convey new meaning, friend can be a verb, invite can be a noun, and I am alright. When your mistaking their/there/they're and similar, I will boil over and defriend you. And, ^^ intentional irony here, for those who cant tell. And just to be obnoxious, repeating it about ^^ here.
I have posted on social media in the past my questioning of what makes a word a word and how it becomes socially acceptable. ty for this as it provides more of an answer than anything I have come across
In and of itself, there is no such thing as correct English or a correct word. Language is most often a dynamic thing which changes according to the times. But there are forms of language which are considered to be 'standards' by the people who set them, self appointed or decided arbiters. By how powerful these people's efforts are, those standards permeate into society at large. The printing press in fact had a lot to do with standardization of the English language. Then you had the efforts of linguists who argued their models of certain standards of language based on certain forms of logic, while others leaned on more subjective grounds. What is for sure is this: Language (like other things in life) is used unwittingly as tool for stratifying people on the social totem pole. People judge you based on the words, grammar or accents that you use. Using these standardized forms of language can give cachet to your political, professional and social goals. And likewise, using what might be considered to be slang or 'improper' language might make people think less of you. It is rather unintelligent, all this snap judgement. But our neurological proclivity is to instantly judge people based on the way they look, dress, speak, smell, etc. So it is our choice whether or not to pander to the whims of society
Ha. That's a cute joke =) But come on now, she was clearly referencing specifically the next utterance. Surely she would have said "I'll start being honest with you..." if she meant that =3 (or something similar)
Words have no intrinsic meaning. Understand that a rock is a rock, it doesn't mean anything. Neither do the sounds that come out of my mouth when I communicate with others. People simply agree upon a meaning of these vocalizations in order to communicate our minds to other people, thus reaching common goals more efficiently.
I loved this TED talk. I have often wondered how words come to be, and to be used a certain way. I get confused, I admit, by "inflammable", because it can mean both not flammable and flammable. I read once, a character in a book say that "it was highly inflammable" and I started to laugh. Did that mean it really, REALLY won't burn? Then I looked it up and was confused by the real word usage. On the topic of common usage, there needs to be a category for words that are over used to the point of making one queasy when they hear it. Like "Dude" and "Whatever", for example. My friends and I now refer to that occurrence as "being Biebered".
All I can say to this video entitled "What makes a Word Real? " by Anne Curzon is very Informative. All that she said was true. I read dictionaries but I don't even read who was behind in those dictionaries. Sometimes, I think who really made this words and put meaning to this words? When we can possibly say that the word is real? Now, after I watched this video I learned that even though the words that can't be found in dictionaries are real as long as we used it and we keep using it. #PrinciplesOfCommunication
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I am a dictionary editor (lexicographer), and yes, we are paying attention to you. Not in a creepy way, just in a very fascinated way.
Just so you know, where I live, people have begun to use the archaic words: thitherto, thenceforth, whither, whitherward, vex, trow, ween, anient, maugre, atwain, haply, enow and whithersoever. These were once common words in the English language, but have fallen out of usage until very recently.
Is there a way for a researcher to learn how often certain word definitions are searched through Google?
My English teacher made me watch this lmaoooo
Same
Same
lmao we r reading this rn
Me too. Just today
same here I am 😭
I will never lose at scrabble again.
Defriend? Hm, I always thought it was "unfriend"
me too lol
That's the point of the example
I was really amazed by her. All the words that she said became interesting to my ears. I have learned a lot about english languages and dictionaries. I have also found out that the world are coping up about what is happening out there most especially about words that people created and gave it a meaning on their own. It's pretty cool that dictionary editors also pays attention to everybody who makes their own words. Thank you so much for all of these stuffs. I really learned a lot.
A word is "real" if one person uses it and the person he is communicating to understands it. It doesn't have to be in a dictionary and it only requires any 2 people to be in agreement what the word means. Case closed.
I totally agree.
very true
Next year I can give a TED talk about "What makes a word "real"?" and I can do it in 15 seconds. Then I'll turn over the mic to 80 other people who can give 15 second TED talks. And at the end of 20 minutes, you will have heard 80 people talk in the same amount of time it took this English historian to communicate to us what I communicated in less than 15 seconds.
Actually, I would like to do a 15 second TED talk on efficient communication.Teach people how to edit themselves before they speak so that the world has a lot more free time to do stuff.
Douilleur Lamagouille I agree with you.
***** Normally I would agree with this sentiment--it does seem that the world is needlessly complicated--but it reduces the linguistic principles to common sense...which, as we all know, is the principle by which people thought the world was flat.
Try to answer these issues with your hypothesis:
-What does 'understand' mean? If I say 'dog' and you're thinking of a boxer but I'm thinking of my best friend, do I really 'understand' you?
-What makes a word a word? What are the limits? Which sounds are the limits? You may have said in response to the last comment 'you're thinking of dawg', but then this raises the issue of phonology. Since 'dog' and 'dawg' are so closely related, when does one become the other?
-How many people have to agree before it is a word? Or is it merely a sign? Or a code? What specifically makes it into a word?
-And to illustrate that last point (and undermine what you said): If I say 'dog' and my wife and I take this to mean 'sandwich' because of some inside joke, but if the rest of the world thinks dog means 'canine', then (according to you) are we using a word...or misusing one? When does our usage become a word and when is it just a code? Or is it slang?
(In other dogs, her dog is a bit more dogged than it dogs at first dog.)
Who's here cuz their teacher made em watch it
Me
I love the lectures that professor Curzan has recorded with The Great Courses Plus. She is the best.
Educational Humor is undefeated. I could watch her go on for double this length of time.
i thought it was unfriend
To be grammatically correct, it would be "defriend"; so facebook _really_ got it wrong!
Omni mopia Or is it? abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/unfriend-defriend-facebook-fans-debate/story?id=9106240
***** I agree with what you're saying. Personally, I've always perceived Friend as being a verb, not an adjective. Clicking the Friend button executes the act of linking your account to another's. So to me, Defriend is the act of breaking said link.
*****
First recorded use of 'Unfriend' is around 1533.
Dictionaries are authorities on usage, not on meaning. In other words, dictionaries are expert on how people use words to mean, they are not authorities on what words should mean.
Lovely way of putting that :)
Confusingly, if you want a book on what a word "should mean," you'll want a usage dictionary.
The entire TED talk in two sentences. Good job =)
Maybe. Could depend on who is editing that particular dictionary. Certain technical dictionaries, or glosseries, should include a definite, precise meaning. If someone says "I have a million ideas on that subject," how many ideas do they mean? Perhaps, only many, or several. If a computer scientist says "there are a million bytes in a megabyte" [plus or minus], what does the scientist mean to say? It depends. Usage, meaning, and perhaps other nuances are all significant.
I'm vexed by how many people _refuse_ to use the comparatives and superlatives of many adjectives.
I've heard many a person state that "stupider" is not a word, likewise with "pleasantest", for example. However, they are indeed words, being the comparative case of "stupid" and the superlative case of "pleasant", respectively. Moreover, "oftener", "oftenest" and "oftest", are also words which are convenient to use. There are myriad other instances of this; people need to understand their options with adjectives.
Please thumb-up this comment so that everyone will know!
Damn, I misread the title as "What makes a WORLD real?" expecting some philosophical talk. Only after a minute I realised my mistake, but listened to it anyway, it was quite interesting even for someone who's not from an english speaking country.
Same as me. I was wondering how to deal with ego.
It's actually WORD not WORLD.❤️
multi-slacking made my day.
Such an amazing talk.
People do things differently
omg I'm multislacking right now!
Lolz 😂
Being a southern gentleman I have had to deal with certain people insisting certain colloquialisms are not words. I know "ain't ain't a word" was a common expression to hear in school. I never will forget a lady from a New England city had moved here when she was High School aged. She had married a local man and in college class she criticized her husband saying, "He says "yonder", Yonder is NOT a word!" to which everyone in the class sat pensively and didn't know if she was right or not. It is of course a word. It has been for a while but it isn't a word used outside of the South as often as it is inside. So, she was right to question its validity but it made me think. "If you can gain meaning from the series of clicks and whistles that I make with my mouth. Does that not make it a word? If not, then honestly, what is a word?"
#PrinciplesofCommunication
Entirely, the verbal and non-verbal expression are evidently utilized along the duration of the speech which signifies that the speaker is effective and notable. Talking about gestures, she did portaryed a very calm and serene aura making the audience be directly gravitated to her and to what she says. She also delivered her speech in respect to the audience and she stepped it up a notch by providing jokes that are relevent to the topic. Overall, the totality of the dicussion was astoundingly perfect. It is an epitome of how communication cycles, from messenger to the reciever and by recieving feedback in the end. It was great.
I understood "multislacking" to mean multitasking but none of the tasks are productive (ie being active on facebook, twitter, reddit and TH-cam while your Excel spreadsheet sits untouched in the background).
Here in England, a new phrase has come into popularity: 'I was sat'. I hate it. Grammar, for me, is extremely important and colloquialisms such as these destroy correct language. There are professional workers such as: journalists, radio presenters, educated people in/on well respected papers/stations who are publicising this newly formed, but incorrect language. I can tolerate text speech on-line to some extent, but when people say it in everyday conversations, I find it dreadful. (Oh dear this is turning into a rant). I realize that language changes constantly and old words become new and vice versa. This is a good talk and I like all those words that her students tell her!
What does that even mean? Does it mean "someone made me sit" or "I was sitting"?
How on earth were you able to watch this talk, enjoy it and understand it and then still talk about 'incorrect' language?
PtNyer Really, it should mean someone-picked-me-up-and-sat-me-down! But it's become known as 'I was sitting'. There's also 'I am sat', 'I want you sat down', it grates on my ears!!
katzchen333 I don't know actually! I'm hipster I guess?!
Did you consciously hyphenate "online"?
I feel like a bit of a paradoxical (for lack of a better word right now) person, because on the one hand, I can be very prescriptive in my own use of words/spelling/grammar etc and can't keep from making sure I type everything 'right', but on the other hand I love encountering new words, new spellings, new phrases etc even though I have to fight from 'correcting' people. Language (especially the English language) is a fascinating creature because the more we evolve and change as a society, the more that language evolves and changes and grows. It's a genuinely beautiful thing to see it happen.
Also, having read "The Dictionary Of Lost Words", I feel like I've gained at least SOME kind of understanding of how dictionaries are 'made', and that book opened my eyes to the fact that you can't just rely on one particular dictionary to be the arbiter of all that's good and right about the English language, because lexicographers CAN have biases against words, whether those are purely personal or a product of their time, and that can drive the contents of a given dictionary in any direction. These days, though, dictionaries (and therefore language as a whole) are less and less being shaped by a mystical They, and more and more by the general public directly. Just look at Urban Dictionary for proof.
The change is the only constant theory is very much applicable to language. Long time back, (almost 40 years ago), Alvin Toffler documented this truth in his celebrated work "Future Shock." Here, the linguistic expert Anne Curzan beautifully explains that in detail. A must watch talk.
Excellent talk - very impactful 😂 I will now go and make up some new words, and hope that they eventually make it into the dictionary!
Enjoyed this very much! In 1998, I worked with a team of technology innovators at a publishing house in Boston to develop one of the first online dictionaries (an adaptation of a best-selling print dictionary). Our thinking --way back when --was that the online format would accommodate the fluidity of the English language by truncating the traditional two-year print cycle. New words "voted in" could then be uploaded to the new format within a very short period of time.
Language is our tool for communication. I sometimes go clueless when I see literature students investigating "traditional" or sometimes writings related to specific periods in history that use words that 'does not mean anything to me' and interpret and waste time on investigating what they were saying!!. This talk is very modernistic in its approach. I think it is the right way to look at any language, not just English.
This talk is so awesoducational
That speech was really Impactful
Such a lovely voice.
This was an extremely interesting talk, I really enjoyed it!
I love hearing the tiny pauses when she thinks she made a joke. Good talk though.
I recognized the implied pause in your comment and I used that pause to laugh out loud. You may now continue.
Or, do you ever notice how people shout “UM..!!” every time after they think they’ve made a joke? 😂
My nephews are adorkable!
She's so adorkable (:
I was waiting for her to finish the story from the beginning.
Does that mean that one day "should of" might one day replace "should have" (or be accepted as another writing) ?
I see this error so often, even coming from native english speakers,and this trend seems to go up.
Language definitions, like prices (or even better - Value), are determined by the free market.
Simply, it was a very nice talk and the examples provided were brilliantly chosen. Good job :)
Funny to watch this a few days after YOLO enters the dictionary. Great talk!
I am grateful to you for this talk!
I was just reading the dictionary before watching this!
I'm multi slacking right now
I enjoyed this talk! I found it interesting, funny, and insightful!
My spell checker doesn't like the word "*includicated*". Surely, it must be broken.
I don't see why one can't be angry about new words and interested in them at the same time.
The language vis live and changing.
A foreign friend once asked my sister, "Is 'fantabulous' a real word?" I guess the answer is "Yes, if you use it enough."
I watch through a ton of really bad TED videos because of these rare gems. :) Totally worth it.
I was grateful to watch this video. I have questions in my mind about the topic what makes the word "real"? Why there are words that I know but it doesn't appear in the dictionaries? But thanks to this video, it answered my questions that word is real if we are using it and we know the meaning of it. I also learned that the words gets in the dictionary because we used it and we keep using it and the dictionary editors are just paying attention to us.
#Principlesofcommmunication
Very interesting video!
I believe that language has creativity and historicity so It's natural the language is changing and adding continuously.
multi-slacking. i love it..
There's one book about this called Frindle.
Some words need a better opportunity to shine. Take serpiginous. It means slow and creeping, curving in a serpentine manner. Sadly, it never even sees the light of day, because it only applies to skin lesions, ulcerations, scars, etc. If we managed to make impact a general verb beyond just teeth (and it's one of my favorite verbs to use), then serpiginous should get that chance too.
Mr. Zielinski Rocks!!!
Thanks TED
Wow this is amazing and i love it!!!
Very good Ted talk! I would add that if the majority of dictionary editors and usage panelists are white, well-educated, and well-off, those identity markers can be pretty ~impactful~ upon the culture's idea of "right" and "wrong" language. Black children and bilingual Latino children are often told the language they and their communities speak is simply wrong. I like what she has to say about English being a living language, and that there's no better authority than the speakers.
What's also interesting is how these new english words find their way into other languages without being translated into the local language. For example, after living in Brazil for more than a year, "Selfie" is a hugely common word among adolescents, even though it derives an english words.
As I listen to this video and she is talking about words that have come into fashion and are discussed at a conference she attends yearly...I immediately think of the word "texted." I hate this word! You either send a text or receive a text...nothing is texted. I know it is commonly used both on television and the internet, but it drives me crazy. Just wanted to share my thoughts.
whos here because of there teachers
A verbal noun is a verb being as a noun.
I believe on what she said that every word has a meaning, like the dictionary every word has its meaning. For once I haven’t seen a word that has no meaning because if it has no meaning it doesn’t make sense at all.
I now have questions about how linguists and lexicographers play Scrabble
Yes it is
I thought "decimate" meant "to kill nine in every ten"!
The Webster dictionary once made a mistake that lead to the neologism "dord". Oxford made up a false word "equivalescence" for copyright. So even a dictionary can lie in some places.
It's totes uncoolies two kids four marry adults, jazzcat!
what? :DD
mickey5241 i61.tinypic.com/1zvadxe.png
As long as new words or new usages convey new meaning, friend can be a verb, invite can be a noun, and I am alright.
When your mistaking their/there/they're and similar, I will boil over and defriend you.
And, ^^ intentional irony here, for those who cant tell.
And just to be obnoxious, repeating it about ^^ here.
16:35 / 17:13 16:11 / 17:13
This woman knows all the english words.
I have posted on social media in the past my questioning of what makes a word a word and how it becomes socially acceptable. ty for this as it provides more of an answer than anything I have come across
Decimate still does mean that...
I´m so afraid that English will change without me!
I won´t know nothing!
My lect ask me to watch and make conclusion on it
One thing she forgot: Your vs you're.
I thought that was a bug on the screen
Wonderful!
I just checked, and rickroll isn't in the dictionaries I have access to including a dictionary of slang! How could that be?
“Multi-slacking.” Heh, heh. I figured she’d say it meant “I’m busy doing nothing.”
Dictionaries can be your best friend or your worst enemy.
Adorkable is good.
I liked this speech and I found it funny and informative.
In and of itself, there is no such thing as correct English or a correct word. Language is most often a dynamic thing which changes according to the times. But there are forms of language which are considered to be 'standards' by the people who set them, self appointed or decided arbiters. By how powerful these people's efforts are, those standards permeate into society at large. The printing press in fact had a lot to do with standardization of the English language. Then you had the efforts of linguists who argued their models of certain standards of language based on certain forms of logic, while others leaned on more subjective grounds.
What is for sure is this: Language (like other things in life) is used unwittingly as tool for stratifying people on the social totem pole. People judge you based on the words, grammar or accents that you use. Using these standardized forms of language can give cachet to your political, professional and social goals. And likewise, using what might be considered to be slang or 'improper' language might make people think less of you.
It is rather unintelligent, all this snap judgement. But our neurological proclivity is to instantly judge people based on the way they look, dress, speak, smell, etc. So it is our choice whether or not to pander to the whims of society
Prior to 13:59 she was lying about EVERYTHING, then she finally decided to be honest with us.
nah son, she's on the "usage panel"
Forsooth!
Ha. That's a cute joke =) But come on now, she was clearly referencing specifically the next utterance. Surely she would have said "I'll start being honest with you..." if she meant that =3 (or something similar)
Kitt Schlatter
For an English expert, I think she said what she meant.
*****
Indeed, or perhaps not :)
Love this! 😆😄
Yep
Words have no intrinsic meaning. Understand that a rock is a rock, it doesn't mean anything. Neither do the sounds that come out of my mouth when I communicate with others. People simply agree upon a meaning of these vocalizations in order to communicate our minds to other people, thus reaching common goals more efficiently.
Makes total sense to me. :)
I didn't know TED was a comedy show.
Comedy is a form of entertainment, which the 'E' of TED stands for.
KS Ng I guess T is technology, but what is D?
D is Design.
I loved this TED talk. I have often wondered how words come to be, and to be used a certain way. I get confused, I admit, by "inflammable", because it can mean both not flammable and flammable. I read once, a character in a book say that "it was highly inflammable" and I started to laugh. Did that mean it really, REALLY won't burn? Then I looked it up and was confused by the real word usage.
On the topic of common usage, there needs to be a category for words that are over used to the point of making one queasy when they hear it. Like "Dude" and "Whatever", for example. My friends and I now refer to that occurrence as "being Biebered".
What else does decimate means if not to kill/destroy 1 every 10 persons/creatures/objects ?
My pet hate: "based off of". As in The Shining was based off of a book by Stephen King. What's wrong with "based on"?
oh 2014 slang your were so innocent
lol great lecture!
Even though i was forced to watch this. Still a great TED talk though
*floccinaucinihilipilification*
Love this word!
LOL
All I can say to this video entitled "What makes a Word Real? " by Anne Curzon is very Informative. All that she said was true. I read dictionaries but I don't even read who was behind in those dictionaries. Sometimes, I think who really made this words and put meaning to this words? When we can possibly say that the word is real? Now, after I watched this video I learned that even though the words that can't be found in dictionaries are real as long as we used it and we keep using it.
#PrinciplesOfCommunication
This reminds me of a long monologue that Stephen Fry gave about the English language and the rigid, starchy use of language.
If you’re watching this from Snow college whaddduuuuup
YOLO "you only live once" is a Ghanaian slang
Ultimately, we can save the English language by making sure it doesn't die the way Latin did.
You should watch " WTF Bending A Mans Mind ". Really good YT video.
That was out of this world mate. Ta from Australia!
That was Really refreshing. I cant believe what I just saw.
I always thought it'd be funny if you 'Defaced' people on Facebook.