Sunday 14 June 2009

One in a million

According to some people, the millionth new English word has been declared. Highly unlikely indeed, but here is a link to a story about it. I just don't believe this. An interesting discussion on this can be found here. Bravo Jeremy Paxman. I wonder how many words there are in Korean. The words I hear at work and in the classroom (in Korean) appear to be pretty much the same week by week, day by day. But they can't be, can they? One particular word drives me mad.

One thing is for certain, the average Korean has a very poor English vocabulary. No matter how much money the country throws at learning the English language, the low level ability will continue until someone realises it's time to change the way people study and puts less emphasis on studying to pass exams and more on actually communicating with people. Perhaps I will pay more attention to trying to give my students more words to learn. Perhaps they will listen

Is Web 2.0 really a word? I have my own favourite English words that change from time to time. 'Lenticular' and 'Decorum' always sound nice to but nothing beats 'Yes'.

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