In something less than a fanfare of trumpets, on Wednesday morning at 10:22 the English language gained it’s millionth word. I spotted it’s impending arrival in a remote corner of the BBC website sometime round about 9 o’clock and waited with baited breath only to be rather disappointed with the arrival of the newly hatched “web 2.0” – Hmm, me thinks, that’s not really a word is it, and whether it is or not, it’s spectacularly dull. How much better if this had been coined a few days earlier leaving the big millionth to the word that came nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety ninth which was “Jai ho”, a word that came from Hindi meaning it is accomplished and would have been quite appropriate had it sprung into existence an hour or two later but such is life. Jai ho apparently came from the film Slumdog Millionaire (which I didn’t go to see in preference for that rather good Benjamin Button film) and slumdog itself appears in position 999,997 (with noob inbetween at 999,998).
The people who look after this list of words are the global language monitor (who live at http://www.languagemonitor.com/ ) and they add a word to the list once they have managed to find it on the internet 25,000 times. I also have discovered from this web site the existence of a language called Toki Pona with only 197 words although a toki pona site I found claims there only to be 118. It was invented by one Sonja Elen Kisa way back in 2001 and wikipedia says that there are 3 fluent speakers. It sounds a bit like Orwellian news speak to start out with but it turns out that the language has an emphasis on the good and one site describes it as “yoga for the mind”. It makes up a lot of words by using a combination of two words, so urine in toki pona is telo jelo (yellow water) and nasa pona is good drunkness although one should be aware that a few extra ports may turn this into nasa ike and leave your telo jelo rather telo loje and you a bit laso jelo about the kala lupa kon – not pona (if anyone can do better with kala lupa kon, I’d be interested to know but it’s the best I could do on 5 minutes of self instruction). Actually I’m strangely impressed by this tiny language, making up for my disappointment in English’s landmark.
All that remains now is to bid you mi tawa and lape pona
Sandy's witterings 