Showing all posts about language
National Dictionary Centre word of 2022 delivered on teal wave
23 November 2022
The Australian federal election, held in May 2022, saw a record number of teal, or independent, MPs elected to the Australian Parliament. Their strong showing has variously been labelled a teal bath or teal wave, after many teal candidates unseated a significant number of sitting members, most of whom belonged to the previous Liberal-National Coalition government.
It perhaps comes as no surprise then to learn the Australian National Dictionary Centre has declared “teal” as their word of 2022:
Previously associated with a dark greenish-blue colour, or even a breed of duck, teal now has another meaning in Australian English. The word came to prominence this year during the federal election. A ‘teal wave’ of independents successfully challenged government members of parliament in a number of seats.
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Wordle words for him and her
12 February 2022
Gender has an influence on vocabulary comprehension, and some words are more familiar to one gender than others it seems. For instance, peplum, tulle, bandeau, and taffeta are words likely to be better known to women, while milliamp, boson, parsec, and shemale (who would have thought), are generally more familiar to men.
There’s a few words on the chart put together by Yuri Vishnevsky I’ve not seen until now, but I’ve made a note of the five-letter words in case they pop-up on Wordle one day.
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The word of the year for 2021 is VAX
3 November 2021
I don’t know how many times I’ve used the word in the last eighteen months, but I’m sure happy its use has been sanctioned by the Oxford English Dictionary.
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Would a language with one hundred and twenty three words be easy to learn?
13 July 2015
Made up of just one hundred and twenty three words, Toki Pona, created by Toronto based linguist Sonja Lang, sounds exactly like the minimal sort of language I could get into.
While communicating clearly through a language with so few words might sound like it is fraught with peril, it is still possible to express just about any concept:
While the Oxford English Dictionary contains a quarter of a million entries, and even Koko the gorilla communicates with over 1,000 gestures in American Sign Language, the total vocabulary of Toki Pona is a mere 123 words. Yet, as the creator Sonja Lang and many other Toki Pona speakers insist, it is enough to express almost any idea. This economy of form is accomplished by reducing symbolic thought to its most basic elements, merging related concepts, and having single words perform multiple functions of speech.
Originally published Tuesday 28 July 2015, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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