Go ahead, make up new words!
-
0:00 - 0:02I'm a lexicographer.
-
0:02 - 0:04I make dictionaries.
-
0:04 - 0:05And my job as a lexicographer
-
0:05 - 0:09is to try to put all the words possible
into the dictionary. -
0:09 - 0:15My job is not to decide what a word is;
that is your job. -
0:15 - 0:18Everybody who speaks English
decides together -
0:18 - 0:20what's a word and what's not a word.
-
0:20 - 0:25Every language is just a group of people
who agree to understand each other. -
0:25 - 0:30Now, sometimes when people are trying
to decide whether a word is good or bad, -
0:30 - 0:32they don't really have a good reason.
-
0:32 - 0:34So they say something like,
"Because grammar!" -
0:34 - 0:36(Laughter)
-
0:37 - 0:40I don't actually really care about grammar
too much -- don't tell anybody. -
0:40 - 0:44But the word "grammar," actually,
there are two kinds of grammar. -
0:44 - 0:46There's the kind of grammar
that lives inside your brain, -
0:46 - 0:49and if you're a native
speaker of a language -
0:49 - 0:50or a good speaker of a language,
-
0:50 - 0:54it's the unconscious rules that you follow
when you speak that language. -
0:54 - 0:57And this is what you learn when
you learn a language as a child. -
0:57 - 0:58And here's an example:
-
0:58 - 1:00This is a wug, right?
-
1:00 - 1:02It's a wug.
-
1:02 - 1:03Now there is another one.
-
1:03 - 1:05There are two of these.
-
1:05 - 1:06There are two ...
-
1:06 - 1:07Audience: Wugs.
-
1:07 - 1:11Erin McKean: Exactly! You know
how to make the plural of wug. -
1:11 - 1:12That rule lives in your brain.
-
1:12 - 1:15You never had to be taught this rule,
you just understand it. -
1:15 - 1:19This is an experiment that was invented
by a professor at [Boston University] -
1:19 - 1:22named Jean Berko Gleason back in 1958.
-
1:22 - 1:25So we've been talking about this
for a long time. -
1:25 - 1:29Now, these kinds of natural rules
that exist in your brain, -
1:29 - 1:33they're not like traffic laws,
they're more like laws of nature. -
1:33 - 1:36And nobody has to remind you to obey
a law of nature, right? -
1:36 - 1:39When you leave the house in the morning,
your mom doesn't say, -
1:39 - 1:42"Hey, honey, I think
it's going to be cold, take a hoodie, -
1:42 - 1:44don't forget to obey the law of gravity."
-
1:44 - 1:46Nobody says this.
-
1:46 - 1:53Now, there are other rules that are more
about manners than they are about nature. -
1:53 - 1:56So you can think of a word as like a hat.
-
1:56 - 1:58Once you know how hats work,
-
1:58 - 2:01nobody has to tell you,
"Don't wear hats on your feet." -
2:01 - 2:05What they have to tell you is,
"Can you wear hats inside? -
2:05 - 2:06Who gets to wear a hat?
-
2:06 - 2:09What are the kinds of hats
you get to wear?" -
2:09 - 2:12Those are more of the second kind
of grammar, -
2:12 - 2:16which linguists often call usage,
as opposed to grammar. -
2:16 - 2:20Now, sometimes people use this kind of
rules-based grammar -
2:20 - 2:23to discourage people from making up words.
-
2:23 - 2:26And I think that is, well, stupid.
-
2:26 - 2:29So, for example,
people are always telling you, -
2:29 - 2:34"Be creative, make new music, do art,
invent things, science and technology." -
2:34 - 2:36But when it comes to
words, they're like, -
2:36 - 2:41"Don't! No. Creativity stops right here,
whippersnappers. Give it a rest." -
2:41 - 2:42(Laughter)
-
2:42 - 2:44But that makes no sense to me.
-
2:44 - 2:46Words are great.
We should have more of them. -
2:46 - 2:51I want you to make
as many new words as possible. -
2:51 - 2:56And I'm going to tell you six ways that
you can use to make new words in English. -
2:56 - 2:58The first way is the simplest way.
-
2:58 - 3:00Basically, steal them from other
languages. -
3:00 - 3:03["Go rob other people"]
(Laughter) -
3:04 - 3:06Linguists call this borrowing,
-
3:06 - 3:09but we never give the words back ,
so I'm just going to be honest -
3:09 - 3:11and call it stealing.
-
3:11 - 3:14We usually take words for things
that we like, like delicious food. -
3:14 - 3:18We took "kumquat" from Chinese,
we took "caramel" from French. -
3:18 - 3:21We also take words
for cool things like "ninja," right? -
3:21 - 3:22We took that from Japanese,
-
3:22 - 3:26which is kind of a cool trick because
ninjas are hard to steal from. -
3:26 - 3:28(Laughter)
-
3:28 - 3:31So another way that you
can make words in English -
3:31 - 3:34is by squishing two
other English words together. -
3:34 - 3:36This is called compounding.
-
3:36 - 3:37Words in English are like Lego:
-
3:37 - 3:40If you use enough force,
you can put any two of them together. -
3:40 - 3:42(Laughter)
-
3:43 - 3:45We do this all the time in English:
-
3:45 - 3:50Words like "heartbroken," "bookworm,"
"sandcastle" all are compounds. -
3:50 - 3:54So go ahead and make words like
"duckface," just don't make duckface. -
3:54 - 3:55(Laughter)
-
3:56 - 4:00Another way that you can make words
in English is kind of like compounding, -
4:00 - 4:05but instead you use so much force
when you squish the words together -
4:05 - 4:07that some parts fall off.
-
4:07 - 4:08So these are blend words,
-
4:08 - 4:12like "brunch" is a blend
of "breakfast" and "lunch." -
4:12 - 4:15"Motel" is a blend of "motor" and "hotel."
-
4:15 - 4:18Who here knew that "motel"
was a blend word? -
4:18 - 4:20Yeah, that word is so old in English
-
4:20 - 4:23that lots of people don't know that
there are parts missing. -
4:23 - 4:27"Edutainment" is a blend
of "education" and "entertainment." -
4:27 - 4:32And of course, "electrocute" is a
blend of "electric" and "execute." -
4:32 - 4:34(Laughter)
-
4:34 - 4:37You can also make words
by changing how they operate. -
4:37 - 4:39This is called functional shift.
-
4:39 - 4:41You take a word that acts
as one part of speech, -
4:41 - 4:44and you change it into another
part of speech. -
4:44 - 4:48Okay, who here knew that "friend"
hasn't always been a verb? -
4:49 - 4:53"Friend" used to be noun
and then we verbed it. -
4:53 - 4:56Almost any word in English can be verbed.
-
4:56 - 4:59You can also take adjectives
and make them into nouns. -
4:59 - 5:03"Commercial" used to be an adjective
and now it's a noun. -
5:03 - 5:05And of course, you can "green" things.
-
5:05 - 5:08Another way to make words
in English is back-formation. -
5:08 - 5:12You can take a word and you can
kind of squish it down a little bit. -
5:12 - 5:17So for example, in English we had the word
"editor" before we had the word "edit." -
5:17 - 5:18"Edit" was formed from "editor."
-
5:18 - 5:21Sometimes these back-formations
sound a little silly: -
5:21 - 5:25Bulldozers bulldoze, butlers butle
and burglers burgle. -
5:25 - 5:27(Laughter)
-
5:27 - 5:29Another way to make words in English
-
5:29 - 5:32is to take the first letters of something
and squish them together. -
5:32 - 5:35So National Aeronautics and Space
Administration becomes NASA. -
5:35 - 5:39And of course you can do this
with anything, OMG! -
5:39 - 5:45So it doesn't matter how silly
the words are. -
5:45 - 5:47They can be really good words of English.
-
5:47 - 5:51"Absquatulate" is a perfectly
good word of English. -
5:51 - 5:53"Mugwump" is a perfectly
good word of English. -
5:53 - 5:58So the words don't have have to sound
normal, they can sound really silly. -
5:58 - 6:00Why should you make words?
-
6:00 - 6:02You should make words because every word
-
6:02 - 6:07is a chance to express your idea and get
your meaning across. -
6:07 - 6:10And new words grab people's attention.
-
6:10 - 6:12They get people to focus on what
you're saying -
6:12 - 6:15and that gives you a better chance to get
your meaning across. -
6:15 - 6:18A lot of people
on this stage today have said, -
6:18 - 6:20"In the future, you can do this,
-
6:20 - 6:23you can help with this, you can
help us explore, you can help us invent." -
6:23 - 6:25You can make a new word right now.
-
6:25 - 6:27English has no age limit.
-
6:27 - 6:30Go ahead, start making words today,
-
6:30 - 6:34send them to me, and I will put them
in my online dictionary, Wordnik. -
6:34 - 6:35Thank you so much.
-
6:35 - 6:40(Applause)
- Title:
- Go ahead, make up new words!
- Speaker:
- Erin McKean
- Description:
-
In this fun, short talk from TEDYouth, lexicographer Erin McKean encourages — nay, cheerleads — her audience to create new words when the existing ones won’t quite do. She lists out 6 ways to make new words in English, from compounding to “verbing,” in order to make language better at expressing what we mean, and to create more ways for us to understand one another.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 06:52
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Go ahead, make up new words! | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Go ahead, make up new words! | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Go ahead, make up new words! | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Go ahead, make up new words! | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Go ahead, make up new words! | ||
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Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Go ahead, make up new words! | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Go ahead, make up new words! |