Comments | social_deixis: A million words?

social_deixis

A million words?

Jun 09, 2009 18:09

Have you seen the article about counting the number of "words" in English? http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/09/million.words/index.html Um? I have a lot to say about this--mostly that it's utter hooey and I'm a little offended by it. So much of the "English ( Read more... )

yay english! ::eyeroll::

Comments 4

sarah_raz June 10 2009, 02:43:40 UTC

Wow...yeah. In some ways, English is a global language, but that also has a lot to do with hundreds of years of imperialism, so it's not really a "yay English language" thing.

Also, I'm a bit creeped out by the whole one-language-planet thing since that also implies one culture, which is obviously scary.

social_deixis June 10 2009, 13:28:10 UTC

Yup, agreed. I'm bothered by both the underlying assumptions in the article (and in the whole notion of "English has the MOST words!") and by the "linguistics" of it. The former smacks of imperialism and the latter is complete and total hogwash.

foolsgoldxo June 11 2009, 06:01:45 UTC

I just saw something to this effect on fb tonight. Someone was quoting it as fact. And then there was much eye rolling.

social_deixis June 11 2009, 16:34:57 UTC

I'm glad there was eye-rolling. It seemed like a lot of folks were taking it seriously, and that was getting my linguist's knickers in a serious wad!