I'm a lexicographer.
I make dictionaries.
And my job as a lexicographer
is to try to put all the words
possible into the dictionary
My job is not to decide what a word is
that is your job
everybody who speaks english
decides together what's a word and what's not a word
every language is just a group of people
who agree to understand each other
now sometimes when people
are trying to decide if a word is good or bad
they don't really have a good reason
they say something like,
"because, grammar!"
(Laughter).
and i don't actually care about grammar too much
don't tell anyone
but the word grammar--
actually, there are two kinds of grammar
there's the kind of grammar that kind of lives inside your brain
if you're a native speaker of a language or a good speaker of a language
it's the unconscious rules that you follow
when you speak that language
and this is what you learn
when you learn an language as a child
here's an example
this is a wog
right, it's a wug
Now there is another one
there are two of these
there are two
(audience): wugs
exactly! you know how to make
the plural of wug
that rule lives in your brain
you never had to be taught this rule
you just understand it
this is a experiment that was invented
by a professor
at boston college
named jean burco0gleesin
back in 1958
so we've been talking about this for a long time
now these kinds of natural
rules that exist in your brain
there's not like traffic laws
there more like laws of nature
and nobody has to remind you to obey
a law of nature, right?
when you leave the house in the morning
your mom doesn't say,
"hey honey, it's going to be cold
take a hoodie, don't forget to obey the law of gravity"
no body says this
laughter
now there are other rules
that are more about manners than they are about nature
so you can think of like
a word is like a hat
once you know how hats work
nobody has to tell you
don't wear hats on your feet
what they have to tell you is
can you wear hats inside
who gets to wear a hat
what are the kinds of hats you get to wear
those are more of the second kind of grammar
that linguists often call usage
as opposed togrammar
now, sometimes people use
this kind of rules-based grammar
to discourage people from
making up words
and i think that is, well, stupid
so for example,
people are always telling you,
"be creative, make music
do art, invent things
science and technology"
but when it comes to words,
they're like
"don't! no. creativity stops right here,
whipper-snappers, give it a rest"
(laughter)
but, that makes no sense to me
words are great
we should have more of them
i want you to make as many new words as possible
and I'm going to tell you six ways
that you can use to make new words
the first way is the simplest way
basically, steal them from other languages
(laughter)
linguists call this borrwing
but we never give the words back
so I'm just going to be honest
and call it stealing
we usually take words for things that we like
like delicious food
we took cumquat from chinese,
we took caramel from french
we also take words for cool things
like ninja, right?
we took that from japanese
which is kind of a cool
trick cause ninjas are hard to steal from
(laugter)
so another way that you can make
words in english is by squishing
two toehr english words together
it's called compounding
words in english are like legos
if you use enough force
you can put any two of them together
we do this all the time in english
words like heartbroken
bookworm, sandcastle
all are compounds
so go ahead and make words
like duck face, just don't make duckface
(laughter)
another way you can make words in english
is kind of like compounding
but instead you use so much force
when you squish the words together
that some parts fall off
so these are blend words
like brunch
is a blend of breakfast and lunch
motel is a blend of
motor and hotel
who here knew that
motel was a blend word?
yeah, that word is like so old
in english that lots of people don't know that
there are parts missing
edutainment is a blend word
of education and entertainment
and of course electrocute
is a blend of electric and execute
you can also make words by chaning
how they operate
this is