A million words!

With the birth of Astha Arora, India’s population touched the one billion mark on 11th May 2000.
Web 2.0 is the millionth word in the English language according to Global Language Monitor

Newspapers and websites were agog with speculation about which word would be the millionth word that GLM would announce earlier this month. Could it be Jai Ho? Could it be slumdog? Or would it be n00b? The suspense was building each day, as reports about the possible millionth word were being published daily . While many Indians rooted for ‘Jai Ho’ for the coveted millionth word in English, some amongst us said, but Jai Ho are two words, not one! Well some even said “But ‘Jai Ho’ is a song!”. Which, of course it is!

Whether it is two words, a song or whatever - I personally preferred “Jai Ho” to "slumdog"! I had been thinking of posting my views at that time, but somehow couldn’t pull of a meaningful string of thoughts – an important condition for a post on the ArTicKles blog. Not enough whatnonsanz to be specific. (One day it will be the 2 millionth word, i hope)

Now that Web 2.0 has been dropped upon us as the millionth word, we have more to ponder and debate. For instance, what exactly is a word? We never needed to ask that question “what exactly is a child?” when young Astha Arora was born. It took a million words in English before we could ask "what exactly is a word" though! My first reaction upon reading the much-awaited announcement was, “Web Two Point Zero? It’s not a word!”

But if it is the millionth word, as we are told, well, it’s got to be a word! It couldn’t be the millionth word without being a word, certainly! “It is an alpha-numeric term” ,one may say. But then so is n00b – which is “n zero zero b”, a combination of letters and numerics, meaning a newcomer in the online gaming community, incidentally.

While there have been several reports in the press expressing the choice to be genuine and apt, Web 2.0 – its arrival ushering in new experiences for the netizens, the comments and views expressed by various writers seem to indicate otherwise. Some have even raised the question that if terms like “financial tsunami” and “wardrobe malfunction”, (which are in reality two words or if you insist, a phrase), have been included in the count to the millionth word. So can we really say we have the millionth word after all?

Pssst - Btw, I suppose “chemical locha” of Munnabhai fame is included already!

Well if GLM has opened its doors wide to welcome all kinds of words, phrases, songs etc, I would suggest them to include “Pappu cant dance sala”. Well, my reasoning is that it is better a word than a song!

So what happened to Jai Ho and Slumdog?

The 999,997th word was Slumdog, the 999,998th was the Hindi salutation Jai Ho, the 999,999th word was N00b, from the internet meaning a new member of an online gaming community, while the 1,000,001st was “financial tsunami”.

Which brings us to the question what constitutes a word for the GLM?

The Global Language Monitor accepts as a word any coinage that has gained sufficiently wide usage: this includes hybrid words in Chinglish (Chinese English), Hinglish (Hindi English), Spanglish (Spanish English), Hollywords (terms created by the film industry), including slang, word-marriages with other languages and the thousands of new terms spawned by the internet. computer jargon and words forged by the internet. The word does not have to be in any dictionary! In fact, the latest Oxford English Dictionary has only about 616,500 word forms.

And just how does GLM decide which word gets entered into their list of words?

Each contender is analysed according to depth (number of citations) and breadth (geographic extent of word usage), as well as the number of times a word has appeared in the global print and electronic media, the Internet, blogs, and social media such as Twitter and YouTube. Words need a minimum of 25,000 citations to qualify.

If you need to know more click here for GLM’s FAQ.
Now we know!
Could this just be a popularity gimmick for GLM and the Technology geeks?

You may also notice how the millionth word has been described by the GLM:
“Web 2.0 - the next generation of web products and services, coming soon to a browser near you”. That sounds more like an ad to me! Perhaps it is. I wonder whether they got the cue from our Regional Transport Office in Mumbai, who sell privileged registration numbers like 1111, 9999, 3000 and of course, 786 to people with moneybags to part with!

It was nice fun, anyway. Considering my love for new words. Jai Ho!

Blogger's Postscript:
Oh, and just in case you haven’t read ( I know you have! ) my article on the subject of new words in English in the TOI on 16th June 09, here’s the link.