Language change: big pictures and little details

Two pieces on language change that have appeared in the press recently offer us a really neat contrast between the big picture of change - David Crystal's The Story of English in 100 Words - and the very small details of it - Henry Hitchings' Wall Street Journal piece on the history and future of punctuation.

Crystal picks one hundred English words and uses them to trace a history of the language, taking in foreign loan words like potato and trek, a homegrown Celtic term like brock or a Scots one like wee, as well as many more recent ones from internet culture, abbreviations and cultural shifts.

Hitchings takes a look at punctuation: where it comes from and where it's going. He considers archaic forms like the pilcrow and hedera, ones that he thinks are on their way out like the apostrophe and semi-colon and ones that are coming back in or just appearing, the snark and the interrobang.

Both articles are a good read and offer some excellent examples of how to take a particular element of language - lexis in Crystal's case, orthography in Hitchings' - and trace its changes over time.

Don't be a mooncalf: learn some new (and old) words

If you're feeling a bit angry or irritated with someone, but are bored of using the same old words to describe them, why not flex your lexis and pick up a whole new vocabulary? It's fun and easy if you go to this link on the Merriam-Webster Dictionary site, and you'll be told a bit about each word too.

If you are interested in recent entries to various dictionaries, this link is helpful. Included among the latest entries are the blend Belieber (believer + Bieber), the intejection ew, which signifies disgust and should appear very close to Bieber's name every time it appears, and oneversation (a blend of one and conversation) which refers to a conversation where the other party doesn't listen to a word you say.

The American Dialect Society voted app as its word of the year for 2010. Which would be great if I had an i-Phone but I don't.

Words we do not <3

A story in the Daily Telegraph reports on the Lake Superior State University in Michigan, USA's annual list of words which should be banned. It's a light-hearted look at expressions that have become over-used in American speech, or that have become meaningless cliches, and makes a good companion piece to Susie Dent's list of words we hated in 2008.

Among the entries in the Lake Superior State University list are some we've probably all heard used here or in coverage of American politics - green for environmental, maverick for deranged and republican, iconic for anything/anyone remotely famous - and others I'd not come across such as the less than 3 emoticon used in the title of this post. It means heart, apparently. Yuck.

Words disappearing

Words don't just change (see below); they sometimes disappear completely. At least, that's what The Daily Telegraph tells us has happened to words like thrush, marzipan and willow in the latest edition of Oxford University Press's Junior Dictionary.

Not only have these words been removed, but they've been replaced with newfangled ones like MP3 player, broadband and dyslexic. While the tone of the article borders on the splenetic (look it up, lexis lovers) to begin with, it does quote some sensible linguists too:

Oxford University Press, which produces the junior edition, selects words with the aid of the Children's Corpus, a list of about 50 million words made up of general language, words from children's books and terms related to the school curriculum. Lexicographers consider word frequency when making additions and deletions.

Vineeta Gupta, the head of children's dictionaries at Oxford University Press, said: "We are limited by how big the dictionary can be – little hands must be able to handle it – but we produce 17 children's dictionaries with different selections and numbers of words.

"When you look back at older versions of dictionaries, there were lots of examples of flowers for instance. That was because many children lived in semi-rural environments and saw the seasons. Nowadays, the environment has changed. We are also much more multicultural. People don't go to Church as often as before. Our understanding of religion is within multiculturalism, which is why some words such as "Pentecost" or "Whitsun" would have been in 20 years ago but not now."

So there you go...at least Christmas is still in it, otherwise I'd be complaining too.

Edited to add: Henry Porter of The Observer has made his own response here. It's a bit verbose (Gilberto, that's you, that is) but has this paragraph which is quite interesting:

However necessary these dull newcomers to the Oxford Junior Dictionary may be, it must be true that with each word and experience excluded, the 21st-century child is minutely deprived. Language becomes more functional, the interior life more arid and the opportunities for rich expression and playfulness fewer.

More word hating

The Oxford English Dictionary is running a vote (with a prize!) asking you to choose your least favourite word from their list. It's here if you want to vote.

Word loving

The BBC News Magazine has been inviting entries for its readers' favourite words. Have a look here for examples of some strange and beautiful words, including the verb to defenestrate and the noun slubberdegullion.

Next week, we'll be starting a new Moodle-based wiki, an interactive website which will allow its users (you and me) to add pages with new word definitions.

Out with the old, in with the new

When we look at Language Change we often get interested in new uses of words, or even new words which crop up. So, today we looked at semantic change in one class and thought about words like bitch, gay, moist, sick, grimy and beef which have changed meaning over time and the processes behind these semantic shifts. Last week we looked at new words and word formation processes: blending (moobs = man + boobs, autocutie = autocue + cutie); compounds (studmuffin = stud + muffin, muffintop = muffin + top); initialisms (FBI, BBC); acronyms (HEIDI = Highly Educated Independent Degree-carrying Individual, BOBFOC = Body Off Baywatch, Face Off Crimewatch, BOGOF = Buy One Get One Free).

But what about old words? In two articles in Monday's Times, old words get discussed and their inclusion in the dictionary debated. In this excellent article, David Crystal - all round language God and one of the speakers at next year's teacher workshops at SFX - talks about what happens when words stop being used or go out of fashion. In this article, The Times ask readers to vote for words they wish to keep in the dictionary and why.