No Words but What We Make
What does it take for a word to me made "real"?
Anne Curzan explores this question in her TED Talk here. In the end, she comes to the conclusion that "If a community of speakers is using a word and knows what it means, it's real." I think this hits the nail on the head. Society and technology are ever evolving, and language must evolve to keep up with them.
In 2009, the American Dialect Society held their decade meeting where they decided on the "Word of the Decade" (A list of all Words of the Year can be found here). This turned out to be the word "google" used as a verb. Nowadays this word is commonplace in society. "Do you know how to fix this? Just google it." It's hard to go a day without hearing some words that never existed 20 years ago, like YOLO or app.
Languages like Greek and Latin have since "died out" over the years, but really they have evolved into modern languages. Language has evolved from the time we started using it; at one point in time, a prehistoric human looked at a fire and made a noise with their mouth, then pointed at it and made the noise and everyone around now knew that the noise meant fire. Almost all words are arbitrary, they have no meaning by themselves they are simply sounds, they only have meaning because we all agree that they have meaning. Because of this, new words can be added my society when a majority decides that a word means something, and this will always move forward in the same way that technology and society do. There truly are no words but what we make.
Anne Curzan explores this question in her TED Talk here. In the end, she comes to the conclusion that "If a community of speakers is using a word and knows what it means, it's real." I think this hits the nail on the head. Society and technology are ever evolving, and language must evolve to keep up with them.
In 2009, the American Dialect Society held their decade meeting where they decided on the "Word of the Decade" (A list of all Words of the Year can be found here). This turned out to be the word "google" used as a verb. Nowadays this word is commonplace in society. "Do you know how to fix this? Just google it." It's hard to go a day without hearing some words that never existed 20 years ago, like YOLO or app.
Languages like Greek and Latin have since "died out" over the years, but really they have evolved into modern languages. Language has evolved from the time we started using it; at one point in time, a prehistoric human looked at a fire and made a noise with their mouth, then pointed at it and made the noise and everyone around now knew that the noise meant fire. Almost all words are arbitrary, they have no meaning by themselves they are simply sounds, they only have meaning because we all agree that they have meaning. Because of this, new words can be added my society when a majority decides that a word means something, and this will always move forward in the same way that technology and society do. There truly are no words but what we make.
You've scratched the surface of these considerations here. I admit to having to look up "brony" from the image you included at the top of this post; this was a new one for me! However, I'm pretty sure all the speakers in Greece would not agree that their language has died out.
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