English? (Rant)

Eric Wallhagen | December 17, 2007
Are you serious? w00t is the Merriam Webster word of the year?!?!? As if that wasn't bad enough... FACEBOOK actually came in as the #2 word of the year. If you don't believe me check it here http://www.m-w.com/info/07words.htm. I thought it was bad enough when a year or so ago Podcast won the word of the year.

Of these 3 "words" (I don't seriously believe any of them is one) w00t is probably the best of them as a slang exclamation. Facebook is a proper noun, a name, not a word. It'd be like Dunkin' Donuts, or McDonalds, or Starbucks winning. That's just not right. And podcast is just a glamorized proprietary name for a download. When I heard the person on the radio talking about how much she loved this word I wanted to puke.

Then it got worse, as everyone everywhere wanted to make use of this trendy word "cast." On the news, I saw things like "weathercast" and even "futurecast." Both obnoxious non-words. Then, just now on weather.com I saw "petcast." I don't even have a clue what the hell this means! Sounds like something for when your dog breaks his leg.

All this while Rudi Giuliani is talking about making it manditory for imigrants to learn English. Personally, I think WE need to learn it before we impose it on others. The American language (yes I say American, because we're the ones killing it, not the brits) is going downhill faster than both our economy and government. I can hear it now... candidates for '12 are going to be running on the "All your base" platform. You heard it here first.

Am I just nuts? Or do people out there agree with me?

Lori Lancaster | December 17, 2007
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Scott Hardie | December 17, 2007
Merriam-Webster fail English? That's unpossible.

Alternative: "w00t" is a perfectly cromulent word. It embiggens the language.

Personally, I like their annual list – "blamestorm" is my favorite from this year – but I think it's important to draw a distinction between legitimate words in the English language that you would actually find in a Merriam-Webster dictionary, and these trendy slang pseudo-words. If I understand it correctly, MW puts out this annual list because they're word geeks and they enjoy seeing what strange neologisms pop up in everyday use, not because they're officially adding these pseudo-words to the dictionary. The list can be fun if seen in that light. I'm sure they also enjoy sparking discussions like this one.

It's funny how, as you age, your later teachers tell you that your early teachers were wrong. We all learned in public school that there are certain official words listed in the dictionary, and terms like "ain't" are incorrect. I was an English major in college, and the professor for the Grammar class, who had been teaching it for many years, stunned many of us when he told us that a word becomes a word when people start using it like one. Think about it: What authority does a dictionary publisher really have to declare "isn't" a real word and "ain't" not a real word except for what they print? There may be scholarly consensus for certain words and against others, but scholars disagree as much as ordinary people do. The bottom line is, there isn't a black-and-white separation when it comes to words; our language exists in shades of gray, with neologisms like "w00t" landing somewhere in the middle, enjoying daily use but not widespread recognition.

Kris Weberg can probably tell us more about this at some point.

Jackie Mason | December 18, 2007
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Scott Hardie | December 18, 2007
Be careful, Jackie. I'm sure with the writers strike, Fox would love to cast you in its new spring series, Can You Spell Better Than a Fourth-Grader?

Tony Peters | December 18, 2007
yes well I'd have serious problems on that show Scott....if it wasn't for spellcheck people would not be able to read anything I write