Word to Know

I love language. I love the English language a lot. English is not unique in its ability to make new words (the french just invented courriel to mean an individual email). Nor is it special when it adopts words from other languages (the Japanese adopted baseboru for baseball). And, the most grammatically complex, it is not. I think german (you gotta read this) gives english a run, and there are plenty of other languages that seem to be as complex as german in my ears.

And speaking of complexity, if you care to hear the truth about that myth that Eskimos have 283 (or whatever) words for snow, check this out. It turns out that the Inuit language builds words with suffixes, a frequent practice in other languages that they carry to the extreme. And in reality, they could have a thousand words for snow. It would be up to the speaker.

And so, blah blah blah, I give you the recently coined word: breastaurant. And for that matter, 2004's most popular (also recently coined) word: blog