Wednesday, June 10, 2009

1,000,000th English word

Today the Global Language Monitor (a Texas-based organization of academics) celebrates the creation of the one millionth word in the English language. Certainly English is a really fast-moving language which never stops making up new words (very well-known examples are email, yuppy, brunch, chic lit, spanglish, etc).
Unlike other languages with official academies, English is free from these constraints and neologisms are very frequent and commonly accepted. Besides, English doesn't belong to its native speakers any more. It first left Great Britain for the New World and today, being a lingua franca, means it is in the hands of millions of foreign speakers. We could say in a way that English is there to help the world communicate better.

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