the English language will pass 1 million.
Someone is counting
something all the time,
you can count on that,
And while I can’t prove it, I’m
relatively sure I am right.
Today, for example, I heard
that within the English language
98 new words
are created every minute of
every single day, so a million
new words seem low.
I’m surprised it’s not a billion.
But how and which, and what gets
counted might make a difference.
The devil is in details, or at least
that has been my experience.
Take the words write,
writing, written, and wrote.
Are these just forms of one word,
or four words? Should we vote?
Or consider words like be and am,
are and is, was and were.
Do these letter differences
matter? Does it occur
to anyone that the answer
depends on the desired outcome?
Do you want the number of words
to be a high or a low sum?
And what about all the foreign
words we adapt and use
when counting all the English words
do you also have to choose
the foreign words – forcing us to
include: jihad, tsunami, bungalow
hors d'oeuvre, béarnaise sauce,
entrepreneur and macho?
Next add to all these words the
job specific jargon words and I go
loco. A million words is a cacographical
nightmare. I mean, hell,
there are already 876,312 words
I currently and constantly misspell,
and in a few months we are going
to have over one million words
most of which can only be spelled
by orthographers and nerds.
