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 language as a child.
Here's an example:
this is a Wug.
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 called functional shift
you take one word that acts
as one part of speech
and you change it into
another part of speech
okay, who here knew that "friend"
hasn't always been a verb?
friend, used to be noun
and then we verbed it
almost any word in english
can be verbed
you can also take adjectives
and make them into nouns
commercial use to be an adjective
and now it's a noun
you can green things
another way to make words
in english is backformation
you can take a word
and kind of squish it down a little bit
so for example, we had the word
editor before we had the word edit
edit was formed from editor
sometimes back-formations sound
a little silly
bulldozers bulldoze
butlers butle
and burglers burgle
(laughter)
another way to make
words in english
is to take the first letters of something
and squish them together
So National Aeronautics and Space Administration
becomes NASA
and of course you can do this
with anything--OMG!
So, it doesn't matter how silly
the words are
they can be really good words of english
absquatulate is a perfectly good word of english
mugwhump is a perfectly goo word of english
words don't have to sound normal
they can sound really silly
why should you make words?
you should make words because every word
is a chance to express your idea
and get your meaning across
and new words grab people's attention
they get people to focus on what you're saying
and that gives you a better chance
to get your meaning across
a lot of people on the stage have said,
"in the future, you can do this
you can help with this
you can help explore
you can help us invent"
you can make a new word now
english has no age limit
go ahead
start making words today
send them to me
and ill put them in my online
dictionary word bank
Thank you so much
(Applause).