Matching Pairs Anne Curzan'sOnline version TED TALK by Enap English 1 Which is when you are adorable in kind of a dorky way. Clearly terrific words that fill important gaps in the English language. But how real are they if we use them primarily as slang and they don't yet appear in a dictionary? With that, let's turn to dictionaries. I'm going to do this as a show of hands. How many of you still regularly refer to a dictionary, either print or online? 2 I wanna pause on that question. What makes a word real? My dinner companion and I both know what the verb defriend means. So when does a new word like defriend become real? Who has the authority to make those kinds of official decisions about words anyway? 3 And they wait for me to go away and talk to someone else. The other set of people, their eyes light up and they say you are just the person I want to talk to. And then they tell me about whatever it is they think is going wrong with the English language. A couple of weeks ago I was at a dinner party and the man to my right started telling me about all the ways that the Internet is degrading the English language. He brought up Facebook and he said to Defriend. I mean, is that even a real word? 4 I need to start by telling you a little bit about my social life, which I know may not seem relevant, but it is. When people meet me at parties and they find out that I'm an English professor who specializes in language, they generally have one of two reactions. One set of people look frightened. They often say something like ohh I better be careful what I say. I'm sure you'll hear every mistake I make. And then they stopped talking. 5 Over the years I have learned some great new slang this way. Including hangry which? Which is when you are cranky or angry because you are hungry. And adorkable. 6 Those are the questions I want to talk about today. I think most people, when they say a word isn't real, what they mean is it doesn't appear in a standard dictionary. That of course raises a host of other questions, including who writes dictionaries. Before I go any further, let me clarify my role in all of this. I do not write dictionaries. I do, however, collect new words much the way dictionary editors do. And the great thing about being a historian of the English language is that I get to call this research. When I teach the history of the English language, I require that students teach Me 2 new slang words before I will begin class. 1 2 3 5 4 6
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