Friday, January 7, 2011

Just how verbose is the English language?

http://www.economist.com/node/17730198

What is interesting, of course, is the approach that the researchers took in compiling the ‘universe’ of words.. Apart from that, two interesting factoids:
     a. There has been an explosion of words in the last few decades – wonder why this is so. One possibility could be the explosion in communication (with phones, email etc) and it could follow that as communication goes up, new words keep getting added to the collective lexicon.
    b. The list compiled based on data is twice that of Oxford English Dictionary – yet another example of how it is impossible for a handful of self-professed experts to keep pace with popular human culture.

And of course, yet another example of research that continues to happen in seemingly pointless areas.

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