Final GLM TrendTopper MediaBuzz Rankings

Lenovo Takes the Gold Pulling Away

J&J Finishes Strong Edging McDonald’s,

Coca-Cola Leaps Over Rivals

Austin, Texas, USA.   August 29, 2008.   The final week of the GLM TrendTopper™ analysis of the performance of the Global Sponsors at the Beijing Olympics, Lenovo (OTC: LNVGY) takes the Gold pulling away from the pack, Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:  JNJ) finishes strong edging McDonald’s (NYSE:  MCD) for the Silver, while Coca-Cola (NYSE: K), in a bold move leaps five spots to No. 4.

On the downside, Samsung (OTC: SSNFL) and Kodak (NYSE: K) each fell three spots to No. 6 and 7 respectively.

Over the last two weeks, Lenovo has completed its remarkable climb from No. 10 to the Top Spot. The analysis was performed by the Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com), the internet and media tracking agency.

According to Paul JJ Payack, President, “In medal round of our competition, Lenovo performed a Phelpsian move pulling away from the crowd.  In fact, its media awareness grew over 2100% since our baseline ‘snapshot’ on the last day of 2007.  The strength of the Johnson & Johnson brand was also remarkable at No. 2. McDonald’s brand equity was leveraged in clever and interesting ways, especially with their spectacular kick-off event. And, once again, Coca-Cola proved itself in the distance events, placing at or near the top for another Olympiad.”  

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Most Direct of all Speakers at Either Convention

Palin and Obama Speech Scores Nearly Identical

Austin, Texas, USA.   September 7, 2008. (Updated)  In an exclusive analysis of the speeches made at the recently concluded Political Conventions, the Global Language Monitor found that John McCain spoke at a third grade reading level, meaning that his speech was the easiest to comprehend of any delivered at either convention.  GLM also found that McCain scored the lowest of all convention speakers in use of the passive voice, an indication of ‘direct’ talk.  Higher use of the passive voice is often view as an indicator of ‘indirect’ and more easily confused speech because the doer of the action is obscured:  ‘Taxes will be raised’  rather than ‘I will raise taxes’. 

In another finding, GLM found that both Sarah Palin’s and Barack Obama’s widely viewed (38 and 37 million viewers respectively), and much acclaimed  acceptance speeches were closely similar, delivered in language that reflected a ninth grade (9.2 and 9.3 respectively) ‘reading level’.  

The basic language evaluation stats are shown below.

It is widely believed that shorter sentences, words and paragraphs are easier to comprehend.

The analysis was performed by the Global Language Monitor, the media analysis and analytics agency.  GLM used a modified Flesch-Kincaid formula for its analysis, which measures factors such as number of words in a sentence, number of letters in a word, the percentage of sentences in passive voice, and other indicators of making things easier to read and, hence, understand.  

This release comes in at the second year of college level (14+).  Warning: do not incorporate these words into presidential addresses.

Delivered in more accessible language than past efforts

Austin, Texas, USA.   September 3, 2008.   In an exclusive analysis of the speeches made at the recently concluded Democratic National Convention, the Global Language Monitor found that Barak Obama’s widely viewed (and acclaimed) acceptance speech was delivered in language that reflected a ninth grade (9.3) ‘reading level’.   ”This is significant,” said Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst of GLM, “because Obama was attempting to communicate to an audience estimated at over 38 million viewers in easier to understand language than typical of his past efforts.  He is widely viewed as having succeeded.” 

Other speeches delivered during the convention ranged from grade levels of 10.5 to 6.4:

•          10.5 (Al Gore),
•          10.3 (Bill Clinton),
•          8.7 (Hillary Clinton)
•          8.0 (Michelle Obama)
•          6.4 (Joe Biden) 

Two of the most important and popular speeches in American history, The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech also registered at ninth grade levels (9.1 and 8.8 respectively).

Speeches by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan often registered at the 12th grade level. 

The analysis was performed by the Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com), the media analysis and analytics agency.  GLM used a modified Flesch-Kincaid formula for its analysis, which measures factors such as number of words in a sentence, number of letters in a word, the percentage of sentences in passive voice, and other indicators of ‘readability’. 

See also:  Obama as a Top Word of 2008

See also:  ObamaSpeak

See also:  Obama Victory Speach Ranked

See also: Final Debate — Candidates Differ Sharply

The Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI)

The Global Language Monitor’s proprietary algorithm, the Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI) is the basis of our analytical engine.

The PQI tracks the frequency of words and phrases in the global print and electronic media, on the Internet, throughout the Blogosphere, as well as accessing proprietary databases (Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, etc.).

Once a keyword base index is created (including selected keywords, phrases, ‘excluders’ and ‘penumbra’ words), ‘timestamps’ and a ‘media universe’ are determined.

The PQI is a weighted Index, factoring in: Long-term trends, Short-term changes, Momentum, and Velocity.   As such it can create ’signals’ that can be used in a variety of applications.

Outputs include: the raw PQI, a Directional Signal, or a Relative Ranking with 100 as the base.

When analyzing words and phrases in political contexts, GLM uses the Political-sensitivity Quotient Index; when analyzing words and phrases in any other context, GLM uses a slightly different Predictive Quantities Indicator.  A third variation is used when analyzing words and phrases in commercial contexts called GLM’s TrendTopper software.

If you are interested in taking a closer look at the methodology underlying the PQI, see the slide show below.

A more detail look is available upon the signing of a NDA (non-disclosure agreement).  We will then take you through the methodology in detail as we have done with numerous technology organizations, government agencies, and media organizations.  If you would like to pursue this option, please send email to info@LanguageMonitor.com.

Click here for a slide show explaining the PQI and how it underlies our TrendTopper Services

The New York Times: The Power of Words features the Global Language Monitor and the PQ Indicator

Sunday, January 29, 2006.  This analysis measure the likelihood of a real estate  in New York (as re

Click here.

Learn about our TrendTopper College Ranking and Branding Services

The Medal Round

Final GLM TrendTopper MediaBuzz Rankings: 

Olympic Global Sponsors: GLM TrendTopper Medal Round

Lenovo Takes the Gold Pulling Away,

J&J Finishes Strong Edging McDonald’s,

Coca-Cola Leaps Over Rivals

Austin, Texas, USA.   August 29, 2008.   The final week of the GLM TrendTopper™ analysis of the performance of the Global Sponsors at the Beijing Olympics, Lenovo (OTC: LNVGY) takes the Gold pulling away from the pack, Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:  JNJ) finishes strong edging McDonald’s (NYSE:  MCD) for the Silver, while Coca-Cola (NYSE: K), in a bold move leaps five spots to No. 4.

On the downside, Samsung (OTC: SSNFL) and Kodak (NYSE: K) each fell three spots to No. 6 and 7 respectively.

Over the last two weeks Lenovo has completed its remarkable climb from No. 10 to the Top Spot. The analysis was performed by the Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com), the internet and media tracking agency.  

According to Paul JJ Payack, President, “In medal round of our competition, Lenovo performed a Phelpsian move pulling away from the crowd.  In fact its media awareness grew over 2100% since our baseline ‘snapshot’ on the last day of 2007.  The strength of the Johnson & Johnson brand was also remarkable at No. 2. McDonald’s brand equity was leveraged in clever and interesting ways, especially with their spectacular kick-off event. And, once again, Coca-Cola proved itself in the distance events, placing at or near the top for another Olympiad.”

When the ‘ambush marketers’ are are included with the Global Sponsors, the DreamWorks Animation studio, makers of “Kung Fu Panda”, rose to an unprecedented No. 5, while Nike (NYSE: NKE) just did it and finished at No.9.  Pepsi (NYSE: PEP), which owns the Gatorade brand, was up slightly, while American Express (NYSE:  AMX) fell five spots.

The Global Sponsors for the Beijing Games are:  General Electric (NBC Universal), Coca-Cola, Kodak, Samsung, Lenovo, McDonalds, Omega, Visa, Johnson & Johnson, Panasonic, Manulife and Atos Origin.  The ambush marketers being tracked include American Express, Nike, DreamWorks and their hit movie “Kung Fu Panda”, and Pepsi, which owns the Gatorade brand.

GLM uses proprietary algorithms to analyze how words and phrases (in this case brand names) are used globally in relationship to other words and phrases (in this case related to the Beijing Olympics) and how they perform against one another in order to determine rankings and other relevant outputs. 

Olympic MediaBuzz Medal Round:  ATHLETES

Phelps Takes Gold,

Newly-coined Media Star Lin Miaoke takes the Silver,

Nastia Liunkin Edges Shawn Johnson for Bronze

Yang Peiyi and Cheng Fei Finish Strong, Yao Ming slips.

Austin, Texas, USA.   August 28, 2008.   In the medal round of the TrendTopper MediaBuzz^TM analysis of the Beijing Olympics, GLM measured how the global media buzz surrounding key athletes changed during the course of the Games.  In the MediaBuzz Medal Round, Michael Phelps took the gold as he pulled away from the pack.  The silver belongs to Lin Miaoke, the newly-coined media star.  And in a mild surprise, Nastia Liunkin bolted from No. 11 to No. 3 edging out Shawn Johnson for the bronze. 

Both Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell, the Jamaican sprinters, fared poorly evidencing little staying power, while Guo Jing Jing, apparently having had her moment in the sun, faded. 

And, in yet another compelling twist, Lin Miaoke’s counterpart, Yang Peiyi, the little girl who did, indeed, sing the song the whole world sings moved up ten spots to No. 5.  The analysis was performed by the Global Language Monitor (GLM), the internet and media tracking agency.

Paul JJ Payack, GLM’s President and Chief Word Analyst, said “The media story for the Beijing Olympics was much larger than Michael Phelps.  The plots and subplots, twists and entanglements were compelling at almost every level – from the Opening ceremony to the very end.  Each of these was well reflected in the TrendTopper MediaBuzz analysis.”  

The ranking follows and includes rank, name, last week’s rank, and change. 

(For more information and other metrics, call 1.925.367.7557.)

Olympian Media Buzz:  The Athletes Ranked, Midway Point

Bolts’ Phelpsian Surge; Guo Jing Jing as in Bling Bling; Shawn Johnson’s Golden Buzz; Cate Campbell Does Swimmingly.

Liu Xiang, Tyson Gay and Paula Radcliffe Plummet.

Austin, Texas, USA.   August 21, 2008.   In its latest TrendTopper^TM analysis of the Beijing Olympics, GLM measured how the media buzz surrounding key athletes has changed during the course of the Games.  As expected Michael Phelps remains a strong No.1 on the TrendTopper BuzzMeter. 

The surprise No. 2, however, belongs to Lin Miaoke, the little girl who didn’t sing the song the whole word sings at the Opening Ceremony.  Miaoke knocked NBA star Yao Ming down to No. 3. 

Lin Miaoke est devenue une célébrité internationale (PeoplesDaily en francais, 8.26.2008)

Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt moved up five spots to No. 4.  Forty-one year-old Dara Torres moved up three spots to No. 5, American elite gynmast Shawn Johnson was up to No. 9 and 16-year-old Cate Campbell jumped eleven spots to No. 12. 

See Lip Syncher Gets Her 15 Minutes of Fame on Reuters

See The View from China: The Mirror’s Front Page Headline — Lin Miaoke defeats the “little giant”

On the downside, Tyson Gay, with a shocking loss in semi-final of 100M, Liu Xiang, China’s first track gold medalist back in Athens, and the UK’s Paula Radcliffe saw their rankings plummet six, eleven and sixteen spots respectively.  The analysis was performed by the Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com), the internet and media tracking agency. 

Paul JJ Payack, GLM’s President and Chief Word Analyst, said “Michael Phelps has joined the athletic Pantheon of Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Pele and Ali, Usain Bolt (No. 4) may be well on the way to becoming the next Michael Phelps, and if lip-syncer Lin Miaoke (No. 2) and Yang Peiyi  (No. 15), her singing counterpart, were in the US, they’d be making the rounds of the morning talk shows.”     

See Analysis by Brent Hunsberger of the Oregonian

 See Analysis by Howard Bloom of Sports Business News

Olympic Global Sponsors vs. Ambush Marketers

GLM TrendTopper™ Analysis: Olympics Week 2 

 Mickey D surges to Top,

 J&J a strong No. 2,

 Visa up to No.3

 Lenovo strong, but Coke & Kodak fall

Austin, Texas, USA.   August 13, 2008.   In Week 2 of the GLM TrendTopper™ analysis of the performance of the Global Sponsors of the Beijing Summer Games McDonald’s (nyse:  MCD) topped the field, while Johnson & Johnson (nyse: JNJ) moved up three notches to No. 2, while Visa (nyse: V) was up one at No.3.  Lenovo (LNVGY), the PC maker, had a very strong performance, moving up six spots to No. 4.  

         

Forbes: Sponsors step up pace to get Olympic mileage 

 

 

Olympic Global Sponsors vs. Ambush Marketers         

       

On the negative side, Samsung (SSNFL) plunged from the top spot to No. 5; Coke (nyse: KO) fell from No.2 to No.7, while Kodak (nyse:  EK) settled in at No. 10, losing three.  The analysis was performed by the Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com), the media tracking agency.

 

 

 

Global Sponsors		Last	Rank	Change		With Ambushers		Last	Change
		Survey						Survey
Rank						Rank
1	McDonald’s	3	3	2		1	McDonald’s	3	2
2	J&J	5	5	3		2	J&J	7	5
3	Visa	4	1	1		3	Amex	6	3
4	Lenovo	10	10	6		4	Visa	4	0
5	Samsung	1	1	-4		5	Nike	5	0
6	Panasonic	9	9	3		6	Lenovo	14	8
7	Coca-Cola	2	2	-5		7	Samsung	1	-6
8	GE	6	6	-2		8	Panasonic	13	5
9	Omega	8	8	-1		9	Coca-Cola	2	-7
10	Kodak	7	7	-3		10	GE	9	-1
11	Atos Origin	12	12	1		11	Kung fu Panda	8	-3
12	Manulife	11	11	-1		12	Pepsi	10	-2
						13	Omega	12	-1
						14	Kodak	11	-3
						15	Atos Origin	16	1
						16	Manulife	15	-1

 

When included in the Survey with the Global Sponsors, American Express (nyse: AXP) and Nike (NKE) both stayed in the Top Five, with Amex moving up three positions to No. 3.  The DreamWorks Animation studio, which made “Kung Fu Panda”, and Pepsi (nyse: PEP), which owns Gatorade fell three and two spots respectively.

According to Paul JJ Payack, President, “The TrendTopper analysis suggests that McDonald’s has successfully capitalized on its blow-out kickoff event last week, while Samsung’s huge marketing push seems to have faltered in Week Two.  Johnson&Johnson was apparently correct in their analysis of their Olympic-themed ads having significantly greater recall.  And Lenovo seems to have done everything right this week, with a 50%+ increase in visibility.  At the same time, Kodak declined some 20%. On the ‘ambush marketing’ side, Amex’ visibility increased significantly and Nike remained quite strong besting nine of the twelve global sponsors.”

The Global Sponsors for the Beijing Games are:  General Electric (NBC Universal), Coca-Cola, Kodak, Samsung, Lenova, McDonalds, Omega, Visa, Johnson & Johnson, Panasonic, Manulife and Atos Origin.  The ambush marketers being tracked include American express, Nike, DreamWorks and their hit movie “Kung Fu Panda”, and Pepsi, which owns the Gatorade brand.

GLM uses proprietary algorithms to analyze how words and phrases (in this case brand names) are used globally in relationship to other words and phrases (in this case related to the Beijing Olympics) and how they perform against one another in order to determine rankings and other relevant outputs.  GLM will update the TrendTopper ranking each week during the Games.

 

 

GLM TrendTopper™ Analysis: Olympics Week 1

 

• Samsung Vaults to Top,

• Coke Close Second,

• McDonald’s Moves Up to No. 3 

 

Ambush Marketers Move into Top Ten:  Nike, AMEX, Kung Fu Panda & Pepsi

Austin, Texas, USA.   August 10, 2008.   (Updated) In an exclusive GLM TrendTopper™ analysis of the performance of the Global Sponsors of the Beijing Summer Games found Samsung vaulting to the lead position of Beijing Field, Coca-Cola a close second, with McDonald’s moving up to the third position.  It also found that Visa stumbled out of the gate losing three positions, while Johnson & Johnson held steady at No. 5. General Electric (and its NBC Universal division) rebounded after losing the early lead position.  The analysis was performed by the Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com), a media tracking agency.

In a related finding, GLM found that four companies were perceived as Global Sponsors though they are not:  Nike, American Express, the DreamWorks Animation studio, which made “Kung Fu Panda”, and Pepsi, which owns Gatorade.  When added into the analysis, Nike moves to No.5, American Express at No.6, Kung Fu Panda (No. 8), and Pepsi (No.10) in the expanded field. 

According to Paul JJ Payack, President, “The TrendTopper analysis suggests that Samsung’s huge marketing push seems to be paying off, and though GE is very strong, and started the year at the top of the survey, it has very little marketing momentum as the games unfold.  Also, the non-global sponsor companies appear to be doing quite well off their ‘ties’ to the Beijing Games.”

The Global Sponsors for the Beijing Games are:  General Electric (NBC Universal), Coca-Cola, Kodak, Samsung, Lenova, McDonalds, Omega, Visa, Johnson & Johnson, Panasonic, Manulife and Atos Origin.

GLM uses proprietary algorithms to analyze how words and phrases (in this case brand names) are used globally in relationship to other words and phrases (in this case related to the Beijing Olympics) and how they perform against one another in order to determine rankings and other relevant outputs.  GLM will update the TrendTopper ranking each week during the Games.

The GLM TrendTopper Analysis with Non-sponsors included follows.

 

Rank		Change in Week
1	Samsung	3
2	Coca-Cola	0
3	McDonald’s	0
4	Visa	-3
NS	Nike	NS
NS	American Express	NS
5	J&J	0
NS	Kung fu Panda	NS
6	GE	4
NS	Pepsi	NS
7	Kodak	+2
8	Omega	-2
9	Panasonic	-1
10	Lenova	-3
11	Manulife	0
12	Atos Origin	0

 

For more information on the methodology, go here. 

 

For analysis details (including historical data and momentum), call 1.925.367.7557.

 

 

For the New York Times article, The Power of Words, click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unprecedented Global Media Outpouring in Coverage of Pope John Paul II’s Passing

Record Media Outpouring: 12 Million Internet Citations and 100,000 Stories in Worldwide Media

Eclipses the South Asian Tsunami, the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, the Bush Re-election, and the Deaths of Ronald Reagan and Princess Diana

Danville, Calif. April 14, 2005. The Death of Pope John Paul II has unleashed an unprecedented global media outpouring that has transformed from a groundswell into a deluge. The Global Language Monitors daily Internet and media analysis now shows that in the major global print and electronic media and on the Internet, John Paul II’s death has surpassed the initial coverage of the South Asian Tsunami, the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks, the Bush re-election, and the Deaths of Ronald Reagan and Princess Diana, among other events that shook the world.

border=0> Since days since the Pontiffs death, there have been some 100,000 major news stories and more than 12 million Internet citations. In comparison, for the entire preceding year there were only 28,000 new stories and 1.5 million Internet citations about John Paul II.

The word historic is associated with the pontiff nearly 3,000,000 times, while conservative is associated some 1,750,000 times, and loved or beloved some 600,000 times since John Paul’s passing.

Within the first 72 hours of the Pontiff’s passing, there have been:

• Almost 3 times as many news stories for John Paul as there were for the 9/11 Terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, though in the major global media the comparison was far closer. Some ten times more news stores than were published concerning the re-election of President Bush.

In addition, within the first 72 hours of the Pontiff’s passing, there have been:

According to Paul JJ Payack, President of The Global Language Monitor, “Other relevant comparisons might be the deaths of Ronald Reagan in 2004 and Princess Diana in 1997. These also, were populist-type phenomena with unprecedented outpourings of grief, though on a far more localized scale.

“Perhaps the root of this phenomenon lies in the fact that ordinary people came to be acquainted with this Pope unlike any other in memory. He was personable, globetrotting, at his best as a friendly parish priest, ‘writ large’. He was a truly global Pontiff, adept at using the traditional media (and the internet) to his advantage. Evidently, on his instructions, the media was even notified of his passing via text messages and e-mail.”

To arrive at these numbers, The Global Language Monitor utilizes its proprietary Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI), which tracks specified words and phrases in the global print and electronic media and on the Internet. The words and phrases are tracked in relation to their frequency, contextual usage and appearance.

The Global Language Monitor analyzes and catalogues the latest trends in word usage and word choices, and their impact on the various aspects of culture. A worldwide assemblage of linguists, professional wordsmiths and bibliophiles, supports the GLM to help monitor the latest trends in the evolution (and demise) of language, word usage and word choices.

Read: Web Flood With Pope Coverage (CNN)

Read: Pope’s Death Spurs 35,000 Stories in a Day (BusinessWeek)

Read: Basketball Attracts More Viewers Than Pope’s Death (Reuters)

Listen: The First ‘Truly Global’ Pope (Radio Renaissance: Portugal)

Listen: The Biggest Story — Ever? (The World: NPR/BBC)

Top Words to Look for at Papal Conclave

Obscure Phrases Can Have Tremendous Impact

Interregnum, Conclave, Popables

Danville, Calif. April 18, 2005. As the Papal Conclave convenes there are sometimes obscure words and phrases that will have tremendous global impact as the process unfolds. According to an analysis performed by The Global Language Monitor, these are some of the top words and phrases to look for:

1. Interregnum: The times when there is no sitting pontiff between the death of a pope and the election of his successor.

2. Conclave: Literally from the Latin for with a key meaning a secret room or closet. Hence, the secret assembly of the cardinals for the election of a new pope.

3. Pope: Whats a Pope? Literally, the Dad or the Holy Father, hence papa in the Romance Languages. Originally, pappas in Greek.

4. Pontiff: Pontifex maximus! Leader of the Holy See; the Office of the Papacy is known as the Pontificate. From the Latin from to make a bridge, whose meaning, though a bit obscure, meant to have control of one of the bridges considered sacred in Rome during pre-Christian days.

5. Sede vacante: The Pontificate is currently a vacant seat.

6. Cardinal: A Prince of the Church, originally subordinate to bishops, which is opposite the current custom. From the Latin for door hinge, as in a key element upon which something else depends.

7. College of Cardinals: The Sacred College, all the 117 Princes of the Church taken as a whole. The original Latin collegium refers to a guild, or a secret society.

8. Color of a Cardinals Vestments: Cardinal, of course, between scarlet and crimson.

9. Eminence: The proper manner to address a Cardinal: Eminentia or Eminentissimi (His Eminence).

10. Official Vatican Language: Latin.

11. The Official Lingua Franca: Italian with English quickly up-and-coming.

12. Languages of the Vatican Website: Italian, English, Spanish, German, and Portuguese

13. Popables: Those cardinals eligible to elect the new pope, who must be under 80 years of age. Although any Catholic male is eligible to be elected, these 117 are considered the only likely candidates (since the last time a non-cardinal assumed the papacy was some 400 years ago.

Is the Language of Christ is Dying?

Overview of Aramaic Linguistics

Aramaic: The Language of Christ

Aramaic Language Resources (University of Washington)

Latin and Other Writing Systems of ANTIQUITY

Latin Language Resources

The Bible in Latin (The Vulgate) University of Chicago

Writing Systems of Antiquity

The Bible in Masoretic Hebrew 8th - 9th C. B.C,

How the 2004 Presidential Election Impacted the Way Americans Speak

Danville, California (November 11, 2004) MetaNewsWire The recently concluded Presidential Election of 2004 has significantly impacted the manner in which Americans communicate with each other and not always in a positive way. For the eight months leading up to the Election, the Global Language Monitor (GLM) has tracked the way Americans communicate with each other about politics. To do this, GLM created its exclusive PQ Index (Political-sensitivity Quotient), a proprietary algorithm that tracks politically sensitive words and phrases in the print, electronic media and the Internet. Some forty words and phrases were analyzed for the Post-Election Survey, including flip flop/flopping, quagmire, Fahrenheit 911, liar!, and misleader.

The PQ Index is perhaps the most in-depth, algorithmic analysis of political word usage ever attempted during a US Presidential campaign. After meeting certain threshold criteria, the index measured how frequently the words and phrases were used in their given political contexts. Then were then tracked on a bi-weekly basis, with greater weight provided for appearances in the major media. Additionally, greater weight was assigned to changes in frequency of appearance the closer the survey came to the election, itself.

Perhaps the one point of agreement by both Republicans and Democrats in the immediate aftermath of the campaign was that moral values played a vastly more important role than had hitherto been estimated. This was re-enforced by the exit polls conducted by Edison Media Research with Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool, which distributed their information to the media through the Associated Press.

The PQ Index picked up this trend months earlier, when issues related to moral values would surface and then, actually, gain in strength as the campaign progressed. By the end of the campaign, these moral values-related words and phrases dominated the pre-Election PQ Index (Political-sensitivity Quotient) of Hot Political Buzzwords released on November 1. Specifically, thirteen or more of the top 20 words and phrases that dominated the media in the run-up to the election, can be classified as directly related to the moral values.

Both the major parties and the mainstream media appear to be surprised at the primacy of the moral values issue atop the exit-poll surveys, though they have used the terms tracked in the PQ Index some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times in the preceding month. What led to this miss was that fact that the moral values question was narrowly interpreted to mean the gay marriage and the Mary Cheney incident. (Both Kerry and Edwards cited the sexuality of the vice presidents daughter, Mary Cheney in their debates, a move widely viewed in the subsequent polls as gratuitous.)

In fact, the idea of moral values includes media bias, flip flopping for political gain, the question of a just or unjust war, the disrespecting of a wartime president (as in Fahrenheit 911), tagging the Chief Executive as a Liar or misleader and the rise of the uncivil war in political discourse / dis-coarse. In fact, The Top Five terms in the November PQ Index can all be viewed as related to moral values, as can be seven of the Top Ten — and 13 of the Top Twenty.

Another factor has been the rampant incivility be found in the political discourse in American politics which has reached unprecedented heights or, rather, lows. It can be argued that not since the Civil War era, when President Lincoln was frequently depicted by adversaries as a gangly, gaping baboon, has the discourse sunken to such a profane level. In fact, such is the decline in the political discourse during this campaign that future historians might actually wonder if the battle being fought was between the “Blue States” and the “Red States” rather than between the forces of Terrorism and The West.

This phenomenon is also related to the “Myth of the 24-Hour News Cycle,” where it is argued that once a politically-sensitive buzzword is launched into todays media world, it seems to persist for an indeterminate period, building a kind of media momentum and extending the news cycle rather than shrinking it. This persistence seems at odds with the general perception of the media being fixated on the 24 hours news cycle.

Some of the key words and phrases that have gained visibility during the 2004 Presidential Election follow.

Colossal Error: Kerrys judgment on Bushs Iraq policy. Evidently following California Olive Growers Association Guidelines for measuring the size of olives — Large, Extra Large, Jumbo, Gigantic, Colossal and Super Colossal. This leaves wiggle room for a ‘super-colossal error’.

Flip Flop/Flopping: Formerly referred to gymnastic routines, pancakes, and dolphin acts (Flipper); now a mainstream political term.

Girlie Men: His Honor, the Governator’s, characterization of political opponents.

Global Test: Kerrys description of the bar he would set before committing the US to pre-emptive strikes

Incuriosity: The campaign season with the President being labeled as Incurious George.

Jobless Recovery: A catch=phrase belied by the creation of 2.1 million new jobs in 2004.

Liars!: Signifies the virulence of the name-calling between opponent supporters. Bush wins the ‘Liar Poll with a 2:1 lead over Kerry.

Liberal: Now looked upon as a pejorative; for future reference, please use progressive.

Mary Cheney: For better or for worse, now a household name used in more than 100,000 media citations in the preceding six weeks..

Media Bias: A contentious issue, especially when used in conjunction with the Dan Rather “60 Minutes” imbroglio.

Misleader: MoveOn.org started this all by calling the sitting president a ‘misleader’.

Moral Values: Currently in more than 4,000 media stories; widely varies in interpretation.

Political Incivility: A catch-all category for various rude directives — Cheney, Heinz-Kerry, et al. combined here.

Quagmire: A fading, Viet Nam-era term rescued from obscurity.

Red States/Blue States: Before November 2, 2004, a relatively unknown term, a shorthand used by political pundits, describing Republican-leaning states vs. Democrat-leaning states.

Rush-to-War: The short-hand by Administration opponents for the run-up to the Iraq war.

Swift Boats: Might have torpedoed Kerrys presidential aspirations. Actually, Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), small, shallow draft-water vessels operated by the United States Navy for counterinsurgency (COIN) operations during the Vietnam War.

Two Americas: John Edwards frequent of America as divided between rich and poor, the jobless and the employed, liberals (err, progressives) and conservatives.

 — Paul JJ Payack

Myth of 24-hour News Cycle:

• Directly Impacts

• (and Undermines) the 2004 Presidential Campaign

October Surprise Short-lived Compared to August Surprise

Danville, California (October 19, 2004) Though it is commonly assumed that the media is now on a 24-hour news cycle, the opposite appears to be true, according to an exclusive analysis of The Global Language Monitor’s PQ Index (Political-sensitivity Quotient). Though the day-to-day headlines of the 2004 Presidential Campaign are relatively transient, the ideas encapsulated in the political buzzwords that GLM tracks take several months to cycle through the electronic and print media, the internet, and cyberspace, particularly the blogosphere.

Once a ‘politically-sensitive’ buzzword is launched into today’s media world, it seems to persist for an indeterminate period, building a kind of ‘media momentum’ and extending the news cycle rather than shrinking it. This persistence seems at odds with the general perception of the media being fixated on the ’24 hours news cycle’.

The PQ Index (Political-sensitivity Quotient) released monthly by The Global Language Monitor is a proprietary algorithm that tracks politically sensitive words and phrases in the media and on the Internet.

A current example: the PQ Index has been the tracking the “Swift Boats” issue for over six months as shown in Figures 1 and 2. Though it peaked in the last few weeks at No. 1 in the August Tracking Index with the release of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads, it remains strongly entrenched in the Top Ten in the October survey. The evidence suggests that the issue will persist for some time to come; definitely through November 2nd.

Another example might be the labeling of President Bush as a Liar. This first surfaced in early spring as a result of ads launched by 527 organizations, such as MoveOn.org, in an action without precedent in the mainstream media, boldly labeling the sitting president a Liar. This was an early version of this years attack ads that would proliferate throughout the year, and was little noticed by the mainstream media at the time, except as a curiosity.

The ads, however, proved to be harbingers of what was to follow. Over the course of the next six months the label stuck, increasingly resonating especially on the Internet and in the blogosphere. This month the term sits at No. 11 on the PQ Index, down from No. 4 in August. In fact, Bush as Liar! is up some 1400% since the beginning of the year. An additional wrinkle is that Kerry, too, is now being labeled as a Liar! by his critics with nearly 40% of the references tracked by the PQ Index labeling the Democratic nominee as such.

Another example is the Dead and Done Presidents phenomenon. With the passing of Ronald Reagan in June and the much-anticipated publication of Bill Clintons autobiography the next month, these two former presidents, leapt to the top of the PQ Index in June and July respectively. In the October Index, they both still rank in the Top Twenty demonstrating the persistence of their long-shadows over the current campaign.

Fahrenheit, representing Michael Moores controversial film, Fahrenheit 451, took the top ranking in the July PQ Index, jumping some 400% from the previous month. Fahrenheit maintained its No. 1 position in August and currently ranks as No. 6 in the October Index. Mr. Moore, more than most, seems to have appreciated the new “Surprise” phenomenon, though for maximum impact he might have, in retrospect, released his film a month later, in August rather than July.

And now, in what could be a sign of mounting difficulties for the Democratic Presidential Campaign, this months top political buzzwords (including ‘Dan Rather-related Bias, ‘Liberal,’ Global Test,’ ‘Flip flop/flopping’ and Swift Boats) are creating an inhospitable climate, in many cases overshadowing the key messages of the Democratic Nominee, according to the October PQ Index.

In the October PQ Index, Swift Boats is actually getting more media hits and citations than all otherkey Kerry messages combined. These messages include; “Two Americas,” “Bush the Misleader,” “jobless recovery,” and “global outsourcing”.

With weeks remaining in the Campaign, there is a very real danger that Kerrys key messages will continue to be swamped by the “flip flop,” “Swift Boat” and “Rathergate” (and now the Mary Cheney) issues.

This is not to say that an October Surprise is not possible. Based on recent history and the uncertainty associated with al Qaeda it would be wise to expect any number of such events. However, the importance of the August Surprise with its attendant , momentum-building sustainability, should not be overlooked by current, or future, campaigns.

 — Analysis by Paul JJ Payack

Political Buzz Issues Live Longer on the Net 

Read More:

A Sound Bite is Born: Tracking Politically Sensitive Words in These Politically Sensitive Times (San Diego CityBeat)

Incurious George — Has the President a New Title (Reuters)

Another Obscure 16th C. Word Disinterred (UK)

Incurious in China (Taiwan)

Flashback: Don’t Misunderestimate Dubya!

Misunderestimate on National Public Radio’s (NPR): Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!

ArnoldSpeak Has California Crowds Listening! (Reuters)

Chad Blocking the Road to the White House (CNN)

Presi dential Debates Score at Grade School Level

San Fransisco Chronicle on Chads and Their Aftermath

Names

The Top Names of 2007 with commentary follow.

1. Al Gore – Conveniently, doesn’t need the presidency to top the list.

2. The Decider — George W. Bush, still president after all these years.

3. Bono – U2’s front man out in front on Third World debt relief.

4. Obama & Hillary — Barack’s name now qualifies as a buzzword; quite unusual, though Hil comes close.

5. Hugo Chavez – The Gadfly of Latin America.

6. Vladimir Putin — The supreme leader (President, Prime Minister, whatever) of the Russian Federation.

7. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — Iranian President suggests moving Israel to Europe.

8. Pope Benedict XVI — continues to engage Muslim leadership in thoughtful discussions.

9. David Beckham and Posh Spice – Yet another ‘new’ type of Hollywood power couple.

10. Fidel Castro – The head one of the few remaining Communist states lives yet another year.

The Top Ten Names for 2006 with commentary follow.

3. Bono – Quintessential rock star, front man for the band U2, turned humanitarian.

4. George Bush – Received an old fashioned ‘whuppin’ in the mid-Term elections; still attempting to turn the tide in his last 24 months in office.

5. Kofi Annan – Departing head of the UN, both revered and reviled.

6. Joseph Ratzinger – Pope Benedict XVI turned Muslim heads by quoting a Renaissance scholar with a less than favorable opinion of Islam.

7. Brangelina – Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as a new type of Hollywood power couple.

8. Saddam Hussein – Hanging marks the end of one of the most brutal dictatorships in recent memory.

9. Fidel Castro – Still lives on as the head of one of the few remaining Communist states, some fifty years after the Cuban Revolution.

10. Hugo Chávez – Expressed less than favorable opinion of President Bush at the UN.

The Top Names for 2005

1. (Acts of) God: The world watches helplessly as a superpower is humbled as one of its great cities (New Orleans) is laid asunder (Hurricane Katrina).

3. Katrina: Greek (katharos) for ‘pure’. Before the hurricane, the name was most famously borne by two saints, Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, and three of Henry VIII’s wives.

Read More About the Top Words of 2006

The Real Meaning of the Name of the TomKitten

Washington Post: Cruise baby name has many meanings, expert says

Friday, April 21, 2006

LOS ANGELES — It’s a Nubian tribe, the word for “rose” in Persian, the “sun” in Sanskrit and, oh yes, it’s also an obscure variation on the Hebrew name Sarah and refers to form of an Alpaca’s wool.

Suri also refers to the sun in Sanskrit, an ancient Indo-European language in which the word’s meaning sometimes is translated as “lord” or “ruler.”

Moreover, Suri is the name for the wool of the Andean Alpaca.

In Persian, it means rose, though not necessarily a red rose, as Cruise and Holmes said through their spokesman when the birth was announced.

Payack said Suri was also a relatively rare variation of the biblical name Sarah, which means “lady” or “princess.”

Combined with the child’s last name, which in English means to move or go along, especially in an unhurried or unconcerned fashion, Payack added that Suri Cruise could translate to: “The ruling Nubian sun princess unhurriedly moving along wearing a rose-colored blanket.” (Reuters)

Top Baby Names in the US by Year

Celebrity Children’s Names:

• Apple (daughter of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin)
• Audio Science (son of Shannyn Sossaman)
• Fifi Trixabelle (daughter of Bob Geldof)
• Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily (daughter of Michael Hutchence)
• Jermajesty (son of Jermaine Jackson)
• Moon Unit (daughter of Frank Zappa)
• Phinnaeus (son of Julia Roberts)
• Pilot Inspektor (son of Jason Lee)
• Prince Michael (son of Michael Jackson)
• Puma (daughter of Erykah Badu)
• Rumer Glenn (daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis)
• Sage Moonblood (son of Sylvester Stallone)
• Speck Wildhorse (son of John Mellencamp)
• Tu (daughter of Rob Morrow)

What Does Your Name Mean? Click Here for the Etymology and History of First Names

What’s in a name? On Mars, most anything (How Geographic Features on Red Planet are named)

What to find a Geographic Name Anywhere on the Globe?

Click for The National Geospatial Intelligence Database

What to Name a Gene: Here Are the Guidelines!

The Best, Worst and Weirdest Car Names

Automotive News Europe:

What Was Volkswagon Thinking? Touareg name misgivings

Is Touareg a bad name for Volkswagen’s new sport-utility?
The language experts associated with US-based website yourdictionary.com certainly seem to think so. VW probably believed the Touareg name would conjure up visions of a harsh breed of people with the ability to survive in an inhospitable environment. The perfect image for a rough-and-tumble off-roader. But in fact, “Touareg implies political rebellion by a stateless, Kurd-like tribe whose name literally means ‘abandoned by God,’ ” said Paul Payack, President of yourDictionary.com (and The Global Language Monitor).

Twenty-six leading global linguists with input from 700,000 web visitors (per month) help put together the yourDictionary.com website.

Accenture: One of the Worst Corporate Names

CORPORATE NAME GAMES A TRICKY ISSUE by Ron Carter, Columbus Dispatch

When the area’s dominant department-store chain became Lazarus-Macy’s last month, it didn’t seem to matter that the Lazarus name had done fine on its own for more than 150 years.

For perspective, that dates the chain’s launch in central Ohio to the days of Millard Fillmore, a president from upstate New York who grew up in a log cabin. By comparison, Fillmore bios run pretty short; Lazarus fared much better. Still, the extra moniker was hitched on with the stroke of a corporate wish. Most believe this is just a small step until parent Federated Department Stores makes the switch to Macy’s entirely. So it goes during a time when corporate names vanish as quickly as Andersen Consulting can become Accenture.

The trend is surprising, given that experts talk endlessly about “brand equity,” which is a fancy way of saying there is a lot of value in a name such as Coca-Cola. It makes you wonder: What has happened to the value of a name? “I think a lot of companies don’t consider the ramifications of walking away from an established brand,” said Shel Horowitz, author of Principled Profit, Marketing that Puts People First. “In general, it’s not a smart move in a lot of cases.”

Federated’s situation is a little different, considering that if the Lazarus name is dropped it means the company will be switching to one of the best-known names in retailing. Even so, Horowitz said such a change could send an unexpected signal.

“National brands work differently than regional brands,” he said. “A national brand represents power, but also sameness. Local brands are built more on knowing your customer.” Maybe so. But it’s a new world for anyone selling goods to the public.

Competition is more fierce than ever. This means companies are squeezing everything possible from branding decisions, said Paul JJ Payack, president of yourDictionary.com and The Global Language Monitor, online companies that follows the corporate landscape from a linguistic point of view, including the publishing an annual list of the worst name changes.

“This has a real financial component,” Payack said. “If after doing quantitative analysis a company finds that people are willing to spend 8 percent more when shopping at Macy’s than at Lazarus because of perception, that’s very important. “When people turn on the Thanksgiving Day Parade, it’s not the Lazarus Parade.”

A recent letter writer to The Dispatch said she is starting to grieve already for the day when the Lazarus names disappears from the central Ohio landscape. At least there is no worry that the stores will have to bear the kind of contrived name, such as Qwest or Verizon, that has become fashionable in today’s corporate scramble.

Some believe this trend stems from having too many consultants and focus groups running around. “I think some of these companies,” Horowitz said, “hired some highly paid marketing consultant and they don’t think they are getting their money’s worth unless they follow their advice.”

‘Global Study: Top 10 Most Confusing (yet widely used) High Tech Buzzwords for 2008

Cloud Computing, Green Washing and Buzzword Compliant

Austin Texas November 20, 2008 — In its third annual Internet and media analysis, The Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com) has found the most confusing yet frequently cited high tech buzzwords of 2008 to be cloud computing, green washing, and buzzword compliant followed by resonate, de-duping, and virtualization.  Rounding out the Top Ten were Web 2.0, versioning, word clouds, and petaflop. The most confusing Acronym for 2008 was SaaS (software as a service).

Paul JJ Payack, president of the Global Language Monitor, said “The words we use in high technology continue to become even more obtuse even as they move out of the realm of jargon and into the language at large.”

The Most Confusing Yet Frequently Cited High Tech Words of 2008 with Commentary follow:

· Cloud Computing – Distributing or accessing programs and services across the Internet. (The Internet is represented as a cloud.)

· Green washing – Repositioning your product so that its shortfalls are now positioned as environmental benefits: Not enough power? Just re-position as energy-saving.

· Buzzword Compliant — Including the latest buzzwords in literature about a product or service in order to make it ‘resonate’ with the customer.

· Resonate – Not the tendency of a system to oscillate at maximum amplitude, but the ability to relate to (or resonate with) a customer’s desires.

· De-duping – shorthand for de-duplication, that is, removing redundant data from a system.

· Virtualization – Around since dinosaurs walked the planet (the late ‘70s) virtualization now applies to everything from infrastructures to I/O.

· Web 2.0 – Now there’s talk of Web 3.0, just when we were finally getting used to Web 2.0.

· Versioning – Creating new revisions (or versions) with fewer bugs and more features.

· Word Clouds – Graphic representations of the words used in a text, the more frequently used, the larger the representation.

· Petaflop – A thousand trillion (or quadrillion) floating point operations per second Often mistaken as a comment on the environmental group.

The Most Confusing Yet Frequently Cited Acronym for 2008: SaaS — software-as-as-service to be differentiated, of course, from PaaS (platforms as a service) and IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-service).

Others words under consideration include the ever popular yet amorphous ‘solution’, 3G and SEO.

In 2007 IPOD, Flash, Cookie, Nano and Cookie lead the list with SOA as the most confusing acronym

In 2005, HTTP, VoIP, Megapixel, Plasma, & WORM were the leading buzzwords.

The analysis was completed using GLM’s Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI), the proprietary algorithm that tracks words and phrases in the media and on the Internet. The words are tracked in relation to frequency, contextual usage and appearance in global media outlets. This analysis was performed earlier this month.

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Top 10 Most Confusing (yet widely used) High Tech Buzzwords for 2007

iPod, Flash, Cookie, Nano and Kernel lead list; SOA most confusing acronym

.

San Diego, Calif. and Henderson, NV October 16, 2007. In a worldwide internet and media analysis, The Global Language Monitor has found the most confusing yet frequently cited high tech buzzwords in 2007 to be iPOD, Flash, Cookie, Nano and Kernel followed by Megahertz, Cell (cell as in cell phone), Plasma, De-duplication, and Blu-Ray.

To see the Video Announcement, Click on Herr (mega)Hertz.

The study was released earlier today, on the 13th anniversary of the ‘cookie,’ the invention that made the World Wide Web practical for widespread surfing, communication, and e-commerce.

Paul JJ Payack, President of the Global Language Monitor, said “Educational metrics such as the Flesch Test would place a typical paragraph using these words at the Third-grade reading-level.  At the same time, most college graduates, even from the most prestigious engineering schools such as MIT, Stanford, and CalTech would be challenged to precisely define all ten.  Once again, the High Tech industry has failed its basic language proficiency test.”

The analysis was completed using GLM’s Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI), the proprietary algorithm that tracks words and phrases in the media and on the Internet.  The words are tracked in relation to frequency, contextual usage and appearance in global media outlets.  This analysis was performed in earlier this month.

The Most Confusing Yet Frequently Cited High Tech Words of 2007 with Commentary follow:

1.  iPOD:  We all know the brand, but what exactly is a ‘pod’?  A gathering of marine mammals?  The encasement for peas?  The evacuation module from 2001: A Space Odyssey?

2.  Flash:  As in Flash Memory.  Given it is easier to say than “ I brought the report on my EEPROM chip with a thin oxide layer separating a floating gate and control gate utilizing Fowler-Nordheim electron tunneling”.

3.  Nano:  Widely used to describe any small as in nanotechnology.   Like the word ‘mini’ which originally referred to the red hues in Italian miniature paintings, the word nano- is ultimately derived from the ancient Greek word for dwarf.

4.  Cookie:  Without cookies with their ‘persistent state’ management mechanism the web as we know it, would cease to exist.

5.  Kernel:  The core layer of a computer operating system serving as a connection to the underlying hardware. Ultimately derives from the Old English cyrnel, for corn.

6.  Megahertz MHz):  Named after German physicist Heinrich Hertz, signifying a million cycles per second in computer processor (and not clock) speed.  Next up:  GigaHertz (GHz) and TeraHertz (THz), one billion and one trillion cycles.

7.  Cell (as in Cell Phone):  Operating on the principle of cells, where communicate through low-power transceiver to cellular ‘towers’ up to 6 miles away (which is why you can connect to ground stations from airplanes at 35,000 feet).  The phone connects to the strongest signal which are then passed from tower to tower.

8.  Plasma (as in Plasma Television):  A top word in the last survey still confusing large-screen TV buyers.

9.  De-duplication:  One of the newer buzzwords meaning removing duplicated data from a storage device, as in ‘we’re in the process of de-duping the silo’.  Ouch!

10.  Blu-Ray (vs. HD DVD).  New technology for high capacity DVDs reminiscent of the VHS/Beta wars of the 1980s.

Most

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Global Study: Top 10 Most Confusing (yet widely used) High Tech Buzzwords:

HTTP, Megapixel, Plasma, WORM and Emoticon Among Leaders

Danville, Calif. March 24, 2005. In a worldwide internet and media analysis, The Global Language Monitor found the most confusing yet frequently cited high tech buzzwords to be HTTP, Voice Over IP (VoIP), and Megapixel.  Closely following were Plasma, Robust, WORM and Emoticon.  The study was released earlier today.   “The high tech realm remains an incubator of great ideas and, at the same time, mass confusion.  The industry, with rare exception, has never mastered the basics of translating new products and services into everyday language: It is obvious that the High Tech industry has failed in its basic language proficiency test.”

The Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI) is a proprietary algorithm that trackswords and phrases in the media and on the Internet.  The words are tracked in relation to frequency, contextual usage and appearance in global media outlets.  This analysis was performed in early March of 2005.

The Most Confusing Yet Frequently Cited High Tech Words  with Commentary follow:

1.  HTTP HyperText Transfer Protocol is used for HTML (HyperText Markup Language) files. Not  to be confused with text on too much Starbucks.  More than 1 billion references to HTTP on the web alone.

2.  Voice Over IP   VoIP, (pronounced voip rhyming with Detroit).  Voice over Internet Protocol. Simply put:  web telephony.

3.  Megapixel A really big pixel.  No, one million pixels (thats a lotta pixels) OK, whats a pixel? Computer-ese for picture element.

4. Plasma As in Plasma TV.  Are we talking Red Cross Drives here?  Rather, a flat, lightweight surface covered with millions of tiny glass bubbles with a digitally controlled electric current flowing through it that causes the plasma inside the tiny bubbles to glow.

5.  Robust No one quite knows what this means, but its good for your product to demonstrate robustness.

6.  WORM A virus, right?  No, a Write Once, Read Many file system used for optical disk technology.

7.  Emoticon   A smiley with an emotional component (from emotional icon).  Now, whats a smiley?

8.  Best of breed   Not to be confused with the Westminster Dog Show.  A personalized  solution made of components from various manufacturers; a sort of high tech mix-and-match.

9.  Viral marketing Marketing that Freezes your computer?  Actually, a high tech marketing fad that theoretically results in a geometric progression of ones marketing message.  Sometimes stealth.   Always irritating.

10.  Data migration   Nothing to do with pre-historic mastodons or, even, global warming.  Its where the data in your present software programs can move to newer (or older) versions of the programs or, better yet, into competitive solutions without causing much of a fuss.  A highly unlikely result.

Other terms being tracked included client/server, solution, Paradigm, hypertext, backward compatible, best of breed, and the STUN protocol.

Read:   Buzzwords alienate a low-tech public (Knight-Ridder)

Read:   Top 10 Confusing Tech Buzzwords (Network World)

Read:   Nerdspeak Mostly Bafflegab (Toronto Globe and Mail)

The Infinity Symbol (the lemniscate)

Mathematical Symbols and Notation:  Earliest  Use

Mathematics as a Language

Computational Linguistics

Computer Language List

Read The WordMan on “How the Zero Was Discovered”

The Great Math Problems of the 20th Century

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The Dustbin of History, or How the Infinity Symbol Came into Existence

By Paul JJ Payack

John Wallis (1616-1703) possessed no knowledge of the mathematical arts at the age of fifteen, yet he later went on to become the Savilian professor of Geometry at Oxford, the friend and teacher of Isaac Newton (he was the first to charge that Leibnitz had stolen his ideas for the calculus), and a charter member of the Royal Society. Yet his place in the history of mathematical thought is, perhaps not unjustly, obscure (and oftentimes, simply, ignored). A list of his major formulations would serve, merely, as an esoteric series of footnotes to the said compilation, which would interest, it should be stated, rather few.

For example, Wallis discovered that, in all such operations, it was mass times velocity (mv) that was conserved and not, as it was widely held, merely velocity (v). However, he fell short of unsecreting the laws of motion (which Newton would later publish). He also, at one time, theorized “that for the purposes of calculation, the earth and moon can be treated as a single body, concentrated at their center of gravity …” but stopped short far short of formulating the basis for the Laws of Universal Gravitation.

It can also be noted that Newton borrowed his system of fluxional notation (in which the fluent of was represented by , and the fluent by and so on) yet this, too, was swept into the dustbin of history when it was later replaced by that system developed by Leibnitz. His significant work still owed a heavy debt to the Greeks and the most notable of these was Arithmatica Infinitorum sive Nova Methodus Inquirendi in Curvilineorum Quadraturam aliague difficilora Matheseosos Problemata (1673), which is more often recalled for its title rather than for the fact that it introduced to mathematics the idea of ‘limit’.

It is often opined that a man might fulfill the secret purpose of his existence in the doing of a seemingly trivial deed such as a word said in passing or, perhaps, an action not acted upon (the significance of which, more often than not, is forever hidden from the doer). In the case of John Wallis it can be said that he, quite possibly, achieved his destiny with the few simple strokes of his quill with which he, in 1656, modified a Roman variation for 1000.   This was to serve him simply as the notation for a very small quantity, but, in centuries to come, was to serve the world as the symbol (and signature) of INFINITY.

We’re all speaking Geek By Ben Macintyre

The London Sunday Times

The world wide web, which turned 15 this week, has given us a fantastic outpouring of new words

FIFTEEN YEARS after the birth of the world wide web, the lines of battle are clear. On one side the still young culture of the internet — anarchic, playful, joyfully (and sometimes wilfully) inaccurate, global and uncontrollable; on the other, a paper-based set of priorities — precise, polite, often national in perspective and increasingly paranoid. The latter seeks to manage, limit and define the culture; the former delights in its resistance to regulation.

The battle rages in the conflict between Wikipedia, the sprawling internet encyclopaedia, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the canon versus the loose cannon. This week it erupted in the nursery, when the child-rearing guru Gina Ford threw a tantrum and launched her bizarre attempt to shut down the Mumsnet website because some of the mums had been rude about her.

But in no area of the culture is the collision more intense than over the English language, for the web has changed English more radically than any invention since paper, and much faster. According to Paul Payack, who runs the Global Language Monitor, there are currently 988,974 words in the English language, with thousands more emerging every month. By his calculation, English will adopt its one millionth word in late November. To put that statistic another way, for every French word, there are now ten in English.

That claim has enraged traditional lexicographers. The 20-volume OED has 301,100 entries, and purists point out that Mr Payack has little in the way of method and few criteria to define what really constitutes a word. But that, of course, is the point.

He found the remaining 687,874 words by scouring the internet. Every digital English dictionary was combed, before adding in the emerging words, the hybrids, Chinglish (Chinese-English), the slang, the linguistic odds and sods, and even Hollywords, terms created by the film industry. If a word is used in English, it was acceptable.

The nearest rival to English in sheer fecundity is Chinese, and with 1.3 billion Chinese now being officially urged to learn English, the result is nomogamosis (It is on the list: “A state of marital harmony; a condition in which spouses are well matched.”) and many, many offspring, some of them rather sweet. Drinktea, for example, is a sign on a shop door meaning closed, but also derives from the Mandarin for resting.

The so-called tipping point may have come in the mid-1990s at the same time as the invention of the first effective web browser, for ever since the web has served as a seedbed for language, for the cross-fertilisation and rapid evolution of words.

So far from debasing the language, the rapid expansion of English on the web may be enriching the mother tongue. Like Latin, it has developed different forms that bear little relation to one another: a speaker of Hinglish (Hindi-English) would have little to say to a Chinglish speaker. But while the root of Latin took centuries to grow its linguistic branches, modern non-standard English is evolving at fabulous speed. The language of the internet itself, the cyberisms that were once the preserve of a few web boffins, has simultaneous expanded into a new argot of words and idioms: Ancient or Classic Geek has given way to Modern Geek.

The web has revived the possibilities of word-coinage in a way not seen since Shakespearean times, when the language was gradually assuming its modern structure but was not yet codified into dictionaries (the first comprehensive English dictionary appeared in 1730). Then, as now, the lack of control, and the rapid absorption of new terms and ideas through exploration, colonisation and science, enabled a great flowering of words. Of the 24,000 words used by Shakespeare, perhaps 1,700 were his own inventions: besmirch, anchovy, shudder, impede.

Thanks to the internet, we are witnessing the second great age of the neologism, a fantastic outpouring of words and phrases to describe new ideas or reshape old ideas in novel forms of language. Today, a word does not need the slow spread of verbal usage or literature to gain acceptance. If a word works, the internet can breathe instant life into it.

You do not have to be Shakespeare to forge words. George Bush is constantly evolving new words, but no one should misunderestimate the ability of lesser wordsmiths to do likewise. So many words that ought to exist inexplicably do not. There should be a term for that momentary flash of embarrassment when a cell phone rings and you wonder if it is yours; and for the vague disappointment you feel when you think you are about to sneeze, take a deep breath and then don’t. (National Public Radio in the US recently held a competition to name this proto-sneeze and came up with “sniff-hanger”.) Why is there a word for déjà vu, but nothing to describe the opposite experience, far more common, of knowing something perfectly well but being quite unable to remember it?

Last year this newspaper reported the existence, in the Bantu language Tshiluba, of the long-needed word ilunga, meaning “a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time”. Subsequent investigations suggested that the word may not exist in Tshiluba, but it exists now in English, as thousands of entries on the web attest, and the language is better for it.

Rather than fight the word loans and word borrowings, the strange hybrids and new coinages, we should welcome them. New words expand our world. They can even change it. If ilunga is the thrice-repeated offence that cannot be forgiven, then its opposite is an Arabic word, taraadin, meaning “I win, you win”, the face-saving way to end an argument. As bombs fall on southern Lebanon and missiles on northern Israel, the world could profit from learning a new language, in which ilunga is solved by taraadin.

Spread the word: English is unstoppable

By NEIL REYNOLDS, The Globe and Mail

OTTAWA — California-based linguist Paul Payack expects the English language to gain its one-millionth word this autumn. The language has come a long way indeed, as the English would say, in 400 years. In 1582, the English grammarian Richard Mulcaster could say that the language was “of small reach, stretching no further than this island of ours, nay not there over all.” In 1582, though, William Shakespeare married Ann Hathaway — and the language itself has since flourished as magnificently as the playwright himself. More than one billion people now speak it. Another billion people are learning it. Not bad, indeed.

The British Council, an independent charitable organization, says the English language now has special status of one kind or another in 75 countries. That one-third of the world’s books are published in English. That two-thirds of all scientists read English. That three-quarters of the world’s mail is written in English. That four-fifths of all electronic communications are in English. That people who spend time in Britain simply to learn English spend $2-billion a year doing it.

Language is a fascinating thing, the most complex of human achievements, spontaneously evolved, one unique word or expression at a time, without government control — for that matter, without government interest (aside from official language status). It is true that more than 40 countries have established academic police forces to protect their languages. But these are, for the most part, reactionary institutions that seek to reverse the past rather than invent the future. Cardinal Richelieu was the first of the language cops, founding the illustrious L’Académie française in 1634 with a mandate “to give rules to our language, and to render it pure and elegant.” Time travel would have been a simpler assignment. Once the great language of diplomacy, the French language has been going through rough times. Indeed, France deemed it necessary a few years ago to amend its constitution, specifying French as the official language of the republic. By its nature, language is decentralized, independent and anarchic. Only in exceptional circumstances, is it pure and elegant. It is almost always out of control.

In the 18th century, the English language almost became the American language, escaping by the very skin of its teeth — itself one of those inspired English-only phrases devised by the translators of the King James version of the Bible. (In contrast, the Douay Bible expresses Job’s lament for his wasted body with the literal assertion that “nothing but lips are left about my teeth.”) In the century between the Revolutionary and Civil wars, American references to “the American language” abounded. In 1780, American envoy John Adams could write from France to lobby Congress for an American language academy, directed by learned Americans and empowered to “correct and improve” the young country’s rude misuse of the language. “English is destined to be more generally the language of the world,” he wrote, “than Latin in a previous age and French in the present age.”

North America gave English room to roam. In Mr. Mulcaster’s 1582, English was spoken by perhaps four million people. In Mr. Adams’s 1780, by perhaps 12 million. In Noah Webster’s 1828, on publication of The American Dictionary of the English Language, by perhaps 50 million. A century later, in H.L. Mencken’s rambunctious 1920s, on his publication of The American Language, by perhaps 200 million. With two billion now speaking it or learning to speak it, we can credibly imagine a genuine global language.

Some linguists say that three or four dominant “language brands” will emerge — Chinese and Spanish are most frequently suggested as rival global languages. (In any case, Canada will be competitive. Of the 100 languages used in Canada, Chinese is already No. 3, spoken by one million people.) Language has always been closely connected to patriotism, and almost always to a particular country. The English have always regarded “the American language” as essentially barbaric. Inevitably, in the 19th century, Americans came to regard their distinctive English as a unique language. In 1838, Indiana instructed its state university “to instruct the youth of the Commonwealth in the American language.” In 1854, secretary of state William Marcy ordered U.S. diplomatic missions to use only “the American language.”

Fifteen years ago, Robert MacNeil, the Canadian who for many years co-anchored The MacNeil/Lehrer Report on PBS, wrote his evocative memoir Wordstruck as a love story with the English language. In the end, looking retrospectively from his mother’s home in Halifax to the Atlantic, he says simply: “This is where I was first struck by words. This is where they made me more than a Canadian, an Englishman, or an American; or Scottish, or Irish, or German — all things my forebears were. This is where I became what [dissident Russian poet] Joseph Brodsky calls ‘a citizen of the great English language.’ ” It is this sense of the language that most fully expresses its dynamic.

English is to language as capitalism is to economics. It is the language of laissez-faire, of enterprise — and, beyond all argument, of hope.

Media Abounds With Apocalyptic-type References in Coverage of Katrina

Disaster, Biblical, Global Warming, Hiroshima Top List

‘Refugee’ vs. ‘Evacuee’

San Diego, Calif. September 7, 2005. MetaNewswire. In an exclusive analysis by The Global Language Monitor, the worldwide media was found to abound in Apocalyptic-type terminology in its coverage of the unfolding disaster of Hurricane Katrina in the American Gulf States. Using its proprietary PQI (Predictive Quantities Indicator) algorithm, GLM found the ominous references to include: Disaster, Biblical, Global Warming, Hiroshima/Nuclear bomb, Catastrophe, Holocaust, Apocalypse, and End-of-the-World.

“These alarmist references are coming across the spectrum of print and electronic media, and the internet,” said Paul JJ Payack, president of GLM. “The world appears stunned that the only remaining super power has apparently been humbled, on its own soil, by the forces of nature.”

The global media are mesmerized by the constant bombardment of television images of apparently rampaging, out-of-control elements, apparently in control of a good part of New Orleans, as well as the inability of the authorities to keep their own people fed, sheltered, evacuated, and, even, from dying on the street.

‘Refugee vs. ‘Evacuee’

GLM’s analysis found, for example, that the term for the displaced, refugees, that is usually associated with places like the Sudan and Afghanistan, appeared 5 times more frequently in the global media than the more neutral ‘evacuees,’ which was cited as racially motivated by some of the Black leadership. Accordingly, most of the major media outlets in the U.S. eliminated the usage of the word ‘refugees’ with a few exceptions, most notably, the New York Times.

The September 3 edition of The Times (London) has a story to illustrate the current state of affairs. The head: “Devastation that could send an area the size of England back to the Stone Age.”

The first 100 words sum up the pervasive mood found in the GLMs analysis of the Global Media.

“AMERICA comes to an end in Montgomery, Alabama.For the next 265 miles to the Gulf Coast, it has been replaced by a dangerous and paranoid post-apocalyptic landscape, short of all the things fuel, phones, water and electricity needed to keep the 21st century switched on. By the time you reach Waveland, Mississippi, the coastal town of 6,800 where corpses lie amid a scene of Biblical devastation, any semblance of modern society has gone. “

According to GLM’s analysis, the most frequently used terms associated with Hurricane Katrina in the global media with examples follow. The terms are listed in order of relative frequency.

• Global Warming — The idea that the hand of man was directly responsible for the catastrophe, as opposed to the more neutral climate change. “…German Environmental Minister Jrgen Trittin remains stolid in his assertion that Hurricane Katrina is linked to global warming and America’s refusal to reduce emissions.” (Der Spiegel)
• Hiroshima/Nuclear Destruction — Fresh in the mind of the media, following the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. “Struggling with what he calls Hurricane Katrina’s nuclear destruction, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour shows the emotional strain of leading a state through a disaster of biblical proportions”. (Associated Press).

• Catastrophe — Sudden, often disastrous overturning, ruin, or undoing of a system. “In the Face of Catastrophe, Sites Offer Helping Hands”. (Washington Post)

• Holocaust — Because of historical association, the word is seldom used to refer to death brought about by natural causes. ” December’s Asian catastrophe should have elevated “tsunami” practically to the level of “holocaust” in the world vocabulary, implying a loss of life beyond compare and as callous as this might make us seem, Katrina was many things, but “our tsunami” she wasn’t. (Henderson [NC] Dispatch)

• Apocalypse — Referring to the prophetic visions of the imminent destruction of the world, as found in the Book of Revelations. ” Call it apocalyptic. Whatever you want to call it, take your pick. There were bodies floating past my front door. ” said Robert Lewis, who was rescued as floodwaters invaded his home. (Reuters)

• End of the World — End-time scenarios which presage the Apocalypse. ” “This is like time has stopped Its like the end of the world.” (Columbus Dispatch)

Then there are those in the media linking Katrina with the direct intervention of the hand of an angry or vengeful God, though not necessarily aligned with Americas enemies. “The Terrorist Katrina is One of the Soldiers of Allah, But Not an Adherent of Al-Qaeda,” was written by a high-ranking Kuwaiti official, Muhammad Yousef Al-Mlaifi, director of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Endowment’s research center. It was published in Al-Siyassa. (Kuwait).

List of Top Ten Hurricanes

Etymology of the Name Katrina > Catriona > Katherine

Top Ten Disasters in US History

The Climate Change Question

Retired Hurricane Names

Future Hurricane Names (Global)

Note: Hurricane Alpha has now been named marking the busiest Atlantic Hurricane season on record … therefore the tropical ‘events’ were named beta, then gamma, delta … and it seemed they would go on through the Greek Alphabet. Here’s the entire Greek Alphabet:

Katrina Disaster Buzzword Explainer

San Diego, Calif. September 2, 2005. MetaNewswire. The Global Language Monitorin response to worldwide demand, has created this Hurricane Disaster Buzzword Explainer to help readers understand the many buzzwords, acronyms, and odd turns of phrase that are being employed in relation to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans as it unfolds.

GLM’s List is an ongoing compilation, updated daily; we welcome contributions from around the globe.

The current list with associated commentary follows:

Acadians — French-speaking people who were expelled from Nova Scotia exactly 250 years ago and settled in the bayou. Subject of the epic poem, Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. See Cajun.

Army Corps of Engineers — The USACE is responsible for investigating, developing and maintaining the nation’s water and related environmental resources.

Astrodome — The first enclosed stadium in the US; refugees from the SuperDome will be transported 350 miles to the Astrodome.

Bayou — A slow moving stream or river that runs through the marshlands surrounding New Orleans; home of Cajun Culture.
Big Easy — The nickname for the city of New Orleans, from the laidback lifestyle one finds there.

Breach — Sudden overpowering of a levee, or a floodwall, that allows water to seep or rush in.

Cajun — Literally, Louisianan who descends from French-speaking Acadians, who in 1755 were expelled from Nova Scotia.

Category — The intensity of a hurricane using various measurements including velocity of sustained wind. Categoies range from 1 (weakest) to 5 (strongest). Katrina peaked at Category 5.

Climate Change — The warming of the Earths atmosphere due to natural cycles (politically sensitive; believed to be primarily outside the control of man.) See Global Warming.

Creole — Derives from the Latin creare, meaning “to create.” By the nineteenth century, black, white, and mixed-race Louisianans used the term to distinguish themselves from foreign-born and Anglo-American settlers.

Cyclone — A developing tropical storm, rotating counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. Often confused with but NOT a tornado.

Eye — The center of the hurricane where the skies are clear and the wind is nearly calm.

FEMA — Federal Emergency Management Agency, branch of the US Homeland Security Department. FEMA coordinates the US Federal government’s response to national disasters.

Floating Casinos — Casinos located along the Mississippi coast bringing an annual average revenue of $2.7 billion a year to that state.

Flood Control — The building of levees, pumping stations, sea walls, etc. to keep a city safe from flooding.

Flood Stage — Flood stage is reached when the water in a stream or river over-tops the banks or levees along the banks.

Flood Wall — Narrow, steel and concrete barrier erected to keep the Mississippi River out of New Orleans.

French Quarter — The original living area of the city, now known for Jazz, Cajun cuisine, and Carnival. Located at the highest point of the city.

Global Warming — In theory, the warming of the Earths atmosphere caused primarily by human use of fossil fuels (Politically sensitive; believed to be primarily in the control of man.) See Climate Change.

Hurricane Names — Hurricanes have been named since 1953. Currently, the World Meteorological Organization maintains the alphabetically sorted list of alternating men’s and women’s names. The list was exclusively female until 1979. Names are recycled every 6 years. Influential hurricanes have their names retired.

Hurricane — A tropical cyclone with a sustained surface wind is 74 mph (118 kmh) or more. A hurricane is called a typhoon in the Pacific Ocean.

Hurricane Scale — See Categories.

Hurricane Season — The hurricane season in the Atlantic runs from June 1 to November 30; in the Eastern Pacific, the season begins on May 15 and ends on November 30.

Hurricane Watch/Warning — An official warning that a hurricane is expected to hit a specific area of the coast with 36 hours (watch) or within 24 hours (warning).

Isobar — Isobars around a cyclone are lines on a map that signify the same barometric pressure.

Katrina — The 11th tropical storm of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.

Knot — Wind speed equal to 1.15 Miles Per Hour (MPH) or 1.9 Kilometers Per Hour (KM/HR).

Lake Pontchatrain — Actually, an arm of the sea that borders on New Orleans. Lake Pontchatrain is half the size of the state of Rhode Island.

Levee — Colossal earthen barriers erected to keep water out of the city. Once breeched, levees hinder relief efforts by holding the water inside the city. New Orleans has 350 miles of hurricane levees; they were built to withstand a fast-moving Category 3 storm. Katrina was a Category 4+ storm.

National Guard — Military units organized at the state level to protect the citizens of an individual state.

Norlins — Local pronunciation of the name of the city of New Orleans.

Public Health Emergency — Cholera and typhoid are among the concerns caused by contaminated water.

Pumping Stations — Massive, yet old and inefficient pump houses that would keep any seepage out of New Orleans.

Recovery — To recover the dead after search and rescue operations are complete.

Relief and Response Effort — To provide food, medical supplies and shelter to refuges of a disaster.

Sandbag — Three- to twenty-thousand pound burlap-type containers dropped from Chinook helicopters to plug breaches in levee.

Saffir-Simpson Scale — Used to give an estimate of potential damage and flooding along the coast. Wind speed is the determining factor in the scale. See Category.

Search and Rescue — To search for survivors.

Storm Surge — Sudden rising of the sea over its usual level, preceding the arrival of a hurricane. The Thirty-foot surge on the Mississippi coastline was the highest ever recorded for North America.

Superdome — Home to the New Orleans Saints football team, the Sugar Bowl and numerous professional football championships (Super Bowls).

Tropical Depression — An area of intense thunderstorms becomes organized into a cyclone. Maximun sustained winds reach 34 knots. There is at least one ‘closed’ isobar with a decrease in barometric pressure in the center of the storm.

Tropical Storm — Sustained winds increase to up to 64 knots and the storm begins to look like a hurricane.

Vertical Evac — Vertical evacuation, taking refuge in the topfloors of a high-rise building. In this case, this sort of evacuation often proved fatal.

Top US youthSpeak Words

A’IGHT All Right. As in, “That girl is nice, she’s a’ight.”

BANK: Has lots of flow (see also: flow)

BIZZNIZZLE: Business. As in “None of your bizznizzle!” Part of the Snoop Dogg/Sean John-inspired lexicon.

BLING: Originally bling bling, the sounds of jewelry (preferably diamonds and gold) clinking together, bling now refers to any expensive or ostentatious jewelry.

CHILLIN’: Relaxing, especially with friends

COOL: Still a cool word, even after all these years

CRUNK: A Southern variation of hip-hop music. Also means fun or amped.

DOPE: (1) Excellent, cool, tight, or phat. As in, “That’s totally dope!” (2) Fine, good

FLOW: Money. Originally from ‘cash flow’. (see also: bank)

FO’ SHIZZLE: Variation of ‘for sure’, popularized by rapper Snoop Dogg.

FRESH: Smooth, great-looking

GIVE IT UP! Replaces the square “Please applaud for…”

HELLA: An intensive: hella tight or hella phat.

HOTTIE: Object of affection, either personally or in the cultural milieu.

MAD: A lot. As in, “She has mad money.”

PEACE (or PEACE OUT): “See you later.”

PHAT: Way cool, as in ‘rolling phat’.

PIMPIN: Good with women (Also playa)

POPPINS: Perfect, from ‘Mary Poppins is perfect in every way.’

PROPER: Right, correct; a recycled Briticism.

PROPS: Respect or credit. As in, “He gets mad props!” Can also be used in place of cheers or congratulations.

RICE ROCKETS: Tricked out Japanese compact cars, as opposed to American ‘muscle’ cars.

SHUT UP! ‘Really?’

SICK: Hella cool!

SIDE SHOW: The temporary cordoning off of a freeway, done to perform outrageous car stunts in tricked-out rice rockets.

SNAG: Sensitive New-Age Guy.

STOG: Cigarette, short for ‘stogy’ or “stogie”.

SWEATIN: Irritating, bugging. As in `He’s really sweatin’ me!`

TIGHT: Cool

TRICKED OUT: Souped-up.

WASSUP?, WHAT UP?, and S’UP?: Popular variations of “What’s up?” or “What’s going on?”

WORD: “That’s good,” “That’s OK,” or “That’s right.”

Bonus Youthspeak Phenomenon of Note:

UP TALKING: Ending all sentences with a rising or upward inflection, as if asking a question.

The Top Ten Global YouthSpeak Words for 2006:

1. Yoof Speak – Pan-Asian term for YouthSpeak.

2. Ballin’ – Doing well; fine; as in he’s really ballin’ now.

3. Stick Ice – Chinese YouthSpeak for ‘popsicle’ or ice cream cone.

4. ii – Siigniifiies the text messaging style of doubliing the letter ii wherever iit iis found. (Very gee or preppy).

5. Ya-ya papaya – Snooty person (Singlish from Singapore).

6. 1 – From the U2 song One Love. Sign-off to Instant Messages.

7. =^..^= The emoticon representing a kitty.

8. Get up One’s Nose – Irritates, as in ‘He gets up my nose!’ (UK).

9. LMAO – Texting abbreviation for Laughed My Ass Off.

10. Yobbo – An unrefined or loutish youth (Aussie/UK).

The Top Global YouthSpeak Words for 2005 were: 1. Crunk — A Southern variation of hip hop music; also meaning fun or amped. 2. Mang — Variation of man, as in “S’up, mang?” 3. A’ight — All Right, “That girl is nice, she’s a’ight”.

Read More About the Top Words of 2006

The Top Ten Global YouthSpeak Words For 2005:

1. Crunk: A Southern variation of hip hop music; also meaning fun or amped.

2. Mang: Variation of man, as in “S’up, mang?”

3. A’ight: All Right, “That girl is nice, she’s a’ight”

4. Mad: A lot; “She has mad money”

5. Props: Cheers, as in “He gets mad props!”

6. Bizznizzle: This term for” business” is part of the Snoop Dogg / Sean John-inspired lexicon, as in “None of your bizznizzle!’

7. Fully: In Australia an intensive. as in ‘fully sick’.

8. Fundoo: In India, Hindi for cool

9. Brill! From the UK, the shortened form of brilliant!

10. “s’up”: Another in an apparently endless number of Whazzup? permutations.

Southern California YouthSpeak Bonus: Morphing any single syllable word into 3, 4 or even 5 syllables.

Last year the Top YouthSpeak terms were: Word, Peace (or Peace out), and Proper.

Complete Coverage of the 2008 Elections

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Nicholas D. Kristof: Obama and the war on brains

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Obama “Yes, We Can” Speech Ranked With “I have a Dream,” “Tear Down this Wall,” and JFK Inaugural

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Austin, TX, USA November 7, 2008 – In an analysis completed earlier today, the Global Language Monitor has found that Barak Obama’s “Yes, We Can” speech delivered Tuesday night in Chicago’s Grant Park ranked favorably in tone, tenor and rhetorical flourishes with memorable political addresses of the recent past including Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech, “Tear Down his Wall,” by Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address. GLM, has been tracking the language used in the debates and speeches of the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates throughout the bruising 2008 campaign. In nearly every category, from grade level to the use of passive voice, even the average numbers of letters in the words he chose, Obama’s Victory Speech was very similar in construction to the speeches of King, Reagan and Kennedy.

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Obama Speech a Winner

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“As is appropriate for a forward-looking message of hope and reconciliation, words of change and hope, as well as future-related constructions dominated the address,” said Paul JJ Payack President and Chief Word Analyst of the Global Language Monitor. “Evidently, Obama is at his best at connecting with people at the 7th to 8th grade range, communicating directly to his audience using simple yet powerful rhetorical devices, such as the repetition of the cadenced phrase ‘Yes, we can’, which built to a powerful conclusion.”

Obama’s Victory Speech also was similar in construction to his 2004 Democratic Convention address, which first brought him to widespread national attention.

The statistical breakdown follows.

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	Obama Victory Speech		Obama 2004 Convention
Words	2049		2238
Sentences/Paragraph	1.8		2
Words/Sentence	18.9		20.0
Characters/Word	4.2		4.3
Reading Ease	72.4		67.5
Passive	11%		8%
Grade Level	7.4		8.3

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For a future-oriented message of hope and vision the passive voice was used frequently but effectively. Examples include: “There will be setbacks and false starts. It was also noted that Obama spoke in the authoritative voice of the future Commander-in-Chief with such phrasings as, “To those who would tear the world down – We will defeat you. Some commentators noticed the absence of the collapse of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in the 2001 terrorist attacks from Obama’s catalogue of significant events of last 106 years.

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Historical comparisons follow.

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Kennedy Inaugural Address	10.8
Reagan ‘Tear Down This Wall”	9.8
Lincoln “Gettysburg Address”	9.1
Martin Luther King: ”I have a dream”	8.8
Obama 2004 Democrat Convention	8.3
Obama Victory Speech “Yes, we can”	7.4

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‘Change’, ‘Cataclysmic Events,’ and ‘Global Financial Tsunami’ Dominate Concerns of the American Electorate on Nov. 4

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Austin, TX, USA November 4, 2008 – In an analysis completed just hours before voting began for the 2008 the USPresidential Elections, Austin, Texas-based Global Language Monitor has found that ‘Change’, ‘‘Cataclysmic Events,’ and ‘Global Financial Tsunami’ related words and phrases dominate the Top Ten Concerns of the American Electorate on Nov. 4, 2008.

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The results are based on an on-going 18-month analysis of the political language and buzzwords used throughout the presidential since before the primaries began.  GLM’s uses its PQI Index, a proprietary algorithm that scours the global print and electronic media, the Internet, and blogosphere for ‘hot’ political buzzwords and then ranks them according to year-over-year change, acceleration and directional momentum.

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Political buzzwords are terms or phrases that become loaded with emotional freight beyond the normal meaning of the word.

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Top Ten Concerns of the American Electorate on November 4, 2008.

1. Change is key. Change favors Obama over McCain 3:2.

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2. Cataclysmic events, global warming and climate change rank higher than all other issues except change.

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3. The Global Financial Tsunami and related terms permeate the Election and is that persistent low-humming heard in the background.

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4. Experience counts. Experience favors McCain over Obama 4:3.

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5. Concerns persist about Obama’s experience, background, and past and current associations.

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6. Gender is ongoing issue: it began with Hillary and continues with Palin though it is disguised in all sorts of well-meaning platitudes.

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7. For many in this campaign, gender actually trumps race.

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8. For all the concern about race, it actually seems to be having a positive effect on the Obama campaign, in its an ongoing, just beneath the surface dialogue, with millions (both black and white) voting for Obama precisely BECAUSE he is a black man. This is viewed as separating us (and in some sense liberating us) from a long, painful history.

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9. Working Class Whites IS used as a code word for whites who are working class. No other moniker, such as Reagan Democrats or Soccer Moms has caught on in this election cycle.

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10.  Obama, to his great credit, is no longer perceived as ‘aloof’.

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What’s the advantage of the PQI over the Polls?

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The PQI is, perhaps, the ultimate ‘It is what it is’ measurement of consumer (and in this case Political) sentiment. The PQI simply measures the occurrence of certain words or phrases in the print and electronic media (traditional or otherwise), on the Internet, and across the Blogosphere. It is by its very nature non-biased. When we take a statistical snapshot for the PQI there is no adjustment for ‘underrepresented’ groups, there are no assumptions about probability of turnout, the proportions of newly registered voters, traditional models, or expanded modularities. Rather we take our measurements, check for the rate of positive or negative change in the appearance of a searched word or phrase (what we call velocity and) and publish our results. In other words, it is what it is. Using this methodology, GLM was the only media analytics organization that foresaw the ’04 electorate voting with their moral compasses rather than their pocketbooks.”

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The Top Political Buzzwords for the 2006 Midterm Elections included:  Throes, Quagmire, Credibility, Global Warming, and Insurgency; the Top Political Buzzwords from the 2004 Campaign included:  Swift Boats, Flip Flop, Quagmire, Fahrenheit 911, Misleader, and Liar!

Top 10 Things Political Buzzwords Tell Us About the Vote

Austin, TX, USA November 3, 2008 – In an analysis completed just 48 hours before the US Presidential Elections theGlobal Language Monitor has announced the final installment of the Top Political Buzzwords of the 2008 Presidential Campaign. GLM, has been tracking the buzzwords in this election cycle for some eighteen months.

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Political buzzwords are terms or phrases that become loaded with emotional freight beyond the normal meaning of the word. For example, the word surge has been in the English-language vocabulary since time immemorial.  However, in its new context as an Iraq War strategy, it inspires a set of emotions in many people far beyond the norm.

1. The electorate appears to be more advanced in its thinking than either party (or platform). Taken as a whole their concerns center upon uncontrollable, cataclysmic events such as the global financial meltdown and climate change (Nos. 1 and 2), while raising taxes (No. 22) or cutting taxes (No. 27) are lesser (though still important) concerns.
   
   
2. The phrase ‘Financial Meltdown’ has broken into the Top 20, jumping some 2600% in usage over the last month.
   
   
3. Change is the topmost concern. Though change from what to what remains a good question. ‘Change’ is,without question the top word of this campaign. Both candidates are benefitting from the mantra; however Obama holds a 3:2 edge over McCain in this regard.
   
   
4. The second-most discussed term of the campaign barely surfaces in most media reports, and this is the combination of ‘Climate Change’ and/or ‘Global Warming’.
   
   
5. Experience (No. 5) counts. A lot. Especially, if that experience can serve as a guide through the current series of cataclysmic events. McCain edges Obama 4:3 in the experience category. But Obama is given significant credit as a quick (and judicious) study.
   
   
6. Everyone is talking about race (No. 16) except, apparently, the electorate. It is a Top Twenty issue, but it’s nestled between Joe the Plumber and Obama’s smoking.
   
   
7. Iraq is now a non-issue. No. 8, Surge,and its apparent success has settled the argument, so it is no longer a question of victory or defeat. Even Al Qaeda has lost its grip on the electorate, falling some 11 spots in two weeks.
   
   
8. Palin (Nos 14 and 21) is a ‘go-to’ subject for the media and campaigns alike, with both sides thinking they gain tremendous leverage in her disparagement or apotheosis.
   
   
9. Tony Rezko (No. 23), Acorn (No. 24) and Jeremiah Wright (No. 26) are indeed issues, but are viewed as minor, settled or both for the Obama campaign.
   
   
10. The word, aloof, as related to Obama is no longer on the list.  At the end of the Primary season in June, it was No 14 and a major concern of the Obama campaign.  Obama has apparently overcome this sense of aloofness.

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The ranking of Top Election Buzzwords of the 2008 Presidential Campaign and commentary follow.

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Rank		Comment
1	Change	Obama has a 3:2 Edge over McCain with Change
2	Climate Change	Global warming within 1/2 of 1% for the overall lead
3	Gasoline	Up 2 this week as prices fall
4	Recession	Does a global financial meltdown count as a recession?
5	Experience	Down 2; McCain has 4:3 Edge Here
6	Obama Muslim	A continued presence in Cyberspace
7	Subprime	How we got into this mess in the first place
8	Surge	One of the Top Words from ‘07 now taking a victory lap
9	“That one”	Has spurred the Obama base with ‘I’m for That One’ slogans
10	“Just Words”	Oh Hillary, what hath thou wrought?
11	Gender	Up dramatically since fall campaign though down for week
12	Working Class Whites	Still the object of much affection AND derision
13	Price of oil	More discussion as price declines; up 5
14	Palin Swimsuit	On SNL Alec Baldwin claimed Balin’s ‘way hotter in person’
15	Joe the Plumber	Now making appearances with McCain; up 5
16	Racism (election)	Belies all the media buzz; now in top 20
17	Obama smoking	Down 5 but still in Top Twenty
18	Financial meltdown	Now buzzworthy, indeed.
19	Wall Street Bailout	As reality of global financial meltdown sets in, down 6
20	Internet fundraising	Hangs in there as a hot buzzword at 20
21	Lipstick	Drops dramatically over the last survey; down 10
22	Raise taxes	Raise Taxes No 22; cut taxes No. 27.  Ho Hum.
23	Rezko	Obama’s relationship with Tony Rezko gains one
24	Acorn Voter Reg	Loses a couple as interest apparently wanes
25	Al Qaeda election	Lurking beneath the surface but falls out of Top Twenty
26	Jeremiah Wright	Dr. Wright remains on the radar though falling five more spots
27	Cut taxes	Raise Taxes No 22; cut taxes No. 27.  Ho Hum.
28	Hockey Mom	Causes headlines but not a top issue
29	Nuclear Iran	Drops one more spot since last survey
30	Wash Talking Heads	Not a good week for the Cognoscenti; down 15

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The ranking is determined by GLM’s PQI Index, a proprietary algorithm that scours the global print and electronic media, the Internet, and blogosphere for ‘hot’ political buzzwords and then ranks them according to year-over-year change, acceleration and directional momentum.  Using this methodology, GLM was the only media analytics organization that foresaw the ’04 electorate voting with their moral compasses rather than their pocketbooks.

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The Top Political Buzzwords for the 2006 Midterm Elections included:  Throes, Quagmire, Credibility, Global Warming, and Insurgency; the Top Political Buzzwords from the 2004 Campaign included:  Swift Boats, Flip Flop, Quagmire, Fahrenheit 911, Misleader, and Liar!

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Listen to the Interview on WNYC/PRI

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The Final Debate:  Obama & McCain Differ Sharply

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Obama Doubles Use of Passive Voice Over McCain

Memorable quotes: ‘Joe the Plumber’; ‘I am not President Bush’

Austin, Texas, USA.   October 16, 2008.  In a linguistic analysis of the final Presidential Debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, the Global Language Monitor has found that in sharp contrast to prior debates, Obama’s use of the passive voice doubled that of McCain (and was significantly higher than he typically uses).  The use of the passive voice is considered significant in political speech because audiences generally respond better to active voice, which they tend to view asmore direct.  On a grade-level basis, Obama came in at 9.3 with McCain scoring grade level, while McCain came in at 7.4, a difference of nearly two grade levels.  The debate took place at Hofstra University, in Hempstead, New York.

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The statistical breakdown follows.

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	Obama	McCain	Difference
Words	7,146	6,562	584
Words/Sentence	19.4	15.2	4.2
Sentences/Paragraph	2.0	2.1	5%
Characters/Word	4.4	4.4	0%
Passive Voice (%)	6%	3%	100%
Reading Ease	62.6	68.6	6
Grade level	9.3	7.4	1.9

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Using industry-standard tools and techniques, GLM ranks the candidates’ speech on a number of levels from grade-reading level, the use of the passive voice, a reading ease score (the higher, the easiest to understand), the number of words per sentence, the number of characters per word, among others.

“Again, word choice and usage speaks volumes,” said Paul JJ Payack, GLM’s President & Chief Word Analyst. “Obama came in at a higher grade level than his previous efforts, but McCain was somewhat easier to understand.  Obama’s significantly higher use of the passive voice combined with his frequent use of the word ‘I’ perhaps indicated an impatience with his opponent  last witnessed in his debates with Hillary Clinton.”

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Read:   L’Histoire’s    La Langue des Campagnes

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Obama used the personal pronoun, ‘I’ about 158 times in the debate, while McCain used the word some 119 times.

Memorable phrases include more than a dozen references to ‘Joe the Plumber,’ one Joe Wurzelbacher of Holland, Ohio, and John McCain’s ‘I am not President Bush’ retort to Sen. Obama’s attempt to link his policies to those of the current president.

Obama the Intellectual

Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

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For comparison purposes, here are the results last week’s Town-hall style debate. That debate was notable in the fact that the questions asked by the audience outdistanced both Obama and McCain in the grade-level ranking category.  Perhaps, the most memorable phrase from that debate is perhaps ‘’That one!” the term McCain used to refer to Obama.  “That One” has already joined GLM’s analysis of the Top Political Buzzwords of the 2008 Campaign.

	Obama	McCain	Difference
Words	7,146	6,562	584
Words/Sentence	19.4	15.2	4.2
Sentences/Paragraph	2.0	2.1	5%
Characters/Word	4.4	4.4	0%
Passive Voice (%)	6%	3%	100%
Reading Ease	62.6	68.6	6
Grade level	9.3	7.4	1.9

Top Buzzwords of Presidential Campaign: Two Weeks Out

• Bailout falls dramatically; Experience and Gender Rise
• ‘Change’ and ’Global Warming/Climate Change’ in statistical tie for top

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Austin, TX, USA October 21, 2008 – In an analysis completed just two weeks before the US Presidential Elections the Global Language Monitor has announced that Change and Climate Change remain in a statistical tie for top spot in its list of Political Buzzwords of the 2008 Presidential Campaign, with Bailout falling dramatically to No. 13.

“In the Change ranking, Obama outdistanced McCain by a 3:2 ratio, while in the No. 2 Experience ranking, McCain held a 3:2 edge over Obama,” said Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of the Global Language Monitor. “Joe the Plumber and ACORN voter registration references broke into the Top 25, at No. 19 and No. 22, respectively. In a related finding, Gender (No. 10) continued to rise as Race (No. 20) continued to fall, raising the question if gender is the new race?”

Political buzzwords are terms or phrases that become loaded with emotional freight beyond the normal meaning of the word.  For example, the word surge has been in the English-language vocabulary since time immemorial.  However, in its new context as an Iraq War strategy, it inspires a set of emotions in many people far beyond the norm.

The rank of Top Election Buzzwords, past rank, and commentary follow.

1. Change (1) — Obama has a 3:2 edge over McCain with Change

2. Climate Change (2) — Global warming within 1/2 of 1% for the overall lead

3. Experience (5) — McCain has 3:2 edge over Obama with Experience

4. Recession (4) — World economy imploding but still not officially a ‘recession’

5. Gasoline (6) — Up one as the price dropsa1

6. Obama Muslim Connection (8) — A persistent topic in Cyberspace; up 2

7. Subprime (7) — How we got into this mess in the first place

8. Surge (10) — One of the Top Words from ‘07 moving up ‘ 08 chart

9. “That one” (12) – The remark has spurred the Obama base: ‘I’m for That One’

10. Gender (9) – Is ‘gender’ the new ‘race’?

11. Lipstick (13) — Any talk of Lipstick seems to spur McCain-Palin base

12. Obama smoking (11) – Surprise here; continues to draw interest

13. Bailout (3) – Bailout, as a word, dramatically slipping as reality of the entire debacle sets in

14. “Just Words” (20) — Hillary’s comment on Obama still echoes through the media

15. Washington Talking Heads (21) – Up six this past week alone

16. Palin Swimsuit (24) – Fueled by Alec Baldwin on SNL: Balin’s ‘way hotter in person’

17. Al Qaeda (14) — Always lurking beneath the surface

18. Price of oil (15) – Weakens as price declines

19. Joe the Plumber (NR) – Breaks into Top 25 in debut

20. Race (16) – Continues to drop in media buzz

21. Jeremiah Wright (19) — Dr. Wright remains on the radar, down from No.2 at start

22. Acorn Voter Registration (NR) – Debuts in Top 25; dramatic move over last week

23. Internet fundraising (17) — Loses luster as story; down 6 more spots

24. Rezko (25) — Obama’s relationship with Tony Rezko breaks into Top 25

25. Raise taxes (18) Raise Taxes No 25; cut taxes No. 27: Are you Listening

Others

26. Hockey Mom (22) – Loses a bit of steam

27. Cut taxes (26) Both ‘cut’ and ‘raise’ down this week, again

28. Nuclear Iran (23) Peaked out at No. 18

The ranking is determined by GLM’s PQI Index, a proprietary algorithm that scours the global print and electronic media, the Internet, and blogosphere for ‘hot’ political buzzwords and then ranks them according to year-over-year change, acceleration and directional momentum.  Using this methodology, GLM was the only media analytics organization that foresaw the ’04 electorate voting with their moral compasses rather than their pocketbooks.

The Top Political Buzzwords for the 2006 Midterm Elections included:  Throes, Quagmire, Credibility, Global Warming, and Insurgency; the Top Political Buzzwords from the 2004 Campaign included:  Swift Boats, Flip Flop, Quagmire, Fahrenheit 911, Misleader, and Liar!

The US Presidential Election and the Financial Tsunami

Seemingly chaotic events reflect normalcy of new reality

A Historical Inflection Point

Austin, Texas, USA. October 13, 2008. The worldwide financial tsunami that has captured the attention of the worldwide media (as well as governments, corporations and ordinary citizens), has come to dominate one of the great quadrennial media events of the post-Modern era. No, we are not referring to the Olympics, most recently held in Beijing, or even football’s World Cup but, rather, the US Presidential elections.

The immediate effect of this unprecedented upheaval of global markets is the obfuscation of the clear lines of division offered by the opposing parties in the US Presidential Elections.

There is the sense that we are witnessing an unprecedented historical event; historical in the sense that we now appear to be standing astride (or atop) a cusp in history, a delta, a decision point, what is now called a point of inflection or inflection point.

Watching the nightly news and reading the traditional (for the last two centuries, that is) media, one has the distinct sense that what they perceive as unprecedented almost chaotic circumstances is actually that of the normalcy of the new reality, that of communications at the speed of light that the internet has foisted upon us.

We keep hearing about this most unusual of election cycles, but this is only true when looking through the prism (and historical construct) of the traditional news gathering operations. What is called the 24-hour News Cycle is actually just the tip of the Tsunami washing over the planet at a steady speed and ever-quicker pace. Indeed, the nature of the beast hasn’t change at all. It is our outdated techniques, that haven’t kept up with the new reality: News now emanates at the speed of thought, from tens of thousands or, even, millions of sources.

The nature of a Tsunami is little understood other than the tremendous damage it unleashes when it washes ashore. What we do know, however, is that a tsunami travels in exceedingly long waves (tens of kilometers in length) racing through the oceanic depths at hundreds of kilometers per hour. Only upon reaching the shore is its true destructive power unleashed for all to see (if they survive to witness it at all).

In the same manner, the traditional media become transfixed with the roiling surface seas but fail to acknowledge the more sustained and significant, movements occurring just beneath the surface.

The surface swirls about in fascinating eddies, but the true transformation is occurring as the nearly undetectable waves rush through the open sea only occasionally, though dramatically, making their way onto shore.

In the same manner, the traditional media focuses on the Twenty-four-hour News Cycle but seem to miss the strong and prevalent currents immediately beneath the surface. They vainly attempt to tie global, transformative, and unprecedented events to relatively parochial events and forces (the Reagan Years, the Clinton administration, Bush 41 and 43, the de-regulation initiatives of Alan Greenspan of ‘99) that are being all but over-shadowed (and –whelmed) by unyielding and all-but irresistible forces.

There is an almost palpable sense and correct sense that things are 1) changing forever, 2) out of our control (or even influence), and 3) will have a direct impact upon the planet for generations to follow.

What we can control, and make sense of, however, is a candidate’s wink, smirk or disdainful reference. We can emphatically pin down our opponents into convenient sound bites, hopefully contradicting earlier sound bites. Do you personally take responsibility for Climate Change? (Does the fact that New York City was beneath 5,000 feet of Ice a few dozen centuries ago influence your vote today? A yes or no will suffice!) Is your personal philosophy, whatever it might be, grounded in a belief system that I can systematically debunk and demean. (Yes or no.) Are you for or against atom smashers creating miniscule black holes that may or may not swallow up the Earth? (Answer yes and you are a barbarian; answer no and you have absolutely no respects of the future prospects of the human race.) Did you ever consider yourself a loser (at any point in your life)? Did you ever make the acquaintance of fellow losers?

Nevertheless, the US Presidential Election will proceed to its own conclusion on the first Tuesday of November in the year two thousand and eight.

For the preceding five years, The Global Language Monitor has attempted to clarify the course (and future course) of human events as documented in the English language. The tools at our disposal have sometimes allowed us to peer into events and trends that become, otherwise, obscured, by the ‘noise’ of the Twenty-four Hour News Cycle. Our goal was, and continues to be, to extricate (and explicate upon) the true currents underpinning the events we call news, and to better understand what they mean and how they are perceived with the new media reality in mind. For example, back in the days preceding the 2004 Presidential election cycle, GLM discovered the fact that once ideas, words and phrases were launched into the vast, uncharted, oceanic Internet, they do not, indeed, die out after twenty-four hours but, rather, travel in deep, powerful currents and waves (not unlike those of a tsunami) that only grow stronger as they make their ways to distant shores.

In this new reality, tsunami-like ideas pass through vast seas of information of the Internet, nearly undetected and often unmeasured, until they crash upon our shorelines, where their full power (and possibly fury) is unleashed. The fact that we only entertain them for 24 hours before they are dispatched into the archives of what is considered ‘past’ or ‘passed’ and readily discarded, is beyond the point. We often hear that ‘we’ve never seen anything like this’ before. Of course not. Think back a few hundred years to other information revolutions, such as that introduced along with mechanical type. What do you think the fortunate few thought when they first laid their eyes upon the works of Aristotle, the Bible, or the Arabic translations of Euclid? No one had ever seen anything like that before! Indeed. And astonishment will only become more so as the future unfolds.

 — Paul JJ Payack, President & Chief Word Analyst, The Global Language Monitor

Vice Presidential Debate Linguistic Analysis:

Palin at 10th Grade-level; Biden at 8th Grade-level

Palin’s use of passive voice highest of the 2008 Debates

Read about CNN’s take on the GLM debate analysis.

The Debate on the Debate on the

An Analysis of the Analysis

Austin, Texas, USA.   October 3, 2008. The first and only vice presidential debate of the 2008 Campaign has resulted in Governor Sarah Palin, the republican nominee for vice president speaking at a 10^th grade level, with Senator Joe Biden coming in at an 8^th grade level.  Also noteworthy was the fact that Gov. Palin’s use of passive voice was the highest (at 8%) of the 2008 Presidential and Vice Presidential debates thus far.  The analysis was performed by The Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com), the Austin, Texas-based media analytics and analysis company.

GLM ranks the candidates’ speech on a number of levels from grade-reading level, the use of the passive voice, ‘a readability’ score (the closer to one hundred the easiest to understand, the number of words per sentence, even the number of characters per word.

The statistical breakdown follows.

Notes:  The excessive use of passive voice can be used to obscure responsibility, since there is no ‘doer of the action’.  For example, ‘Taxes will be raised’ is a passive construction, while ‘I will raise (or lower) taxes’ is an active construction.  Five percent is considered average; low for a politician.

By way of comparison, the ranking by grade-levels for historical debates follow.

The number of words is considered approximate, since transcripts vary.

The methodology employed is a modified Flesch-Kincaid formulation.

The First Presidential Debate:

A ‘Linguistic Dead Heat’ — with One Exception

In true professorial fashion, Obama averages some 20 more words per minute

Austin, Texas, USA.   September 28, 2008. The first presidential debate of the 2008 Campaign resulted in a ‘Linguistic Dead Heat’ according to an analysis performed by The Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com).  In nearly every category, from grade level to the use of passive voice, even the average numbers of letters in the words they chose, the candidates remained within the statistical margin of error with one major exception.  In the Number of Words category that the candidates used to convey their messages, Obama, in true professorial style, outdistanced McCain by some thousand words, which breaks down to an average of about 20 more words per minute.

“As in the famous Harvard-Yale game back in 1968, Harvard declared a victory after securing a come-from-behind 29-29 tie.   In the same manner, both sides in the debate have declared victory in an essential deadlocked outcome,” said Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of GLM. “Look at the debate as a football game.  Both teams effectively moved the ball.  However, the scoring was low, and the quarterbacks performed as expected, with McCain completing some excellently thrown passes only to have others blocked by Obama.  Obama’s ground game was more impressive, churning out the yards — but he had difficulty getting the ball over the goal line.”

The statistical breakdown follows.

Notes:  The excessive use of passive voice can be used to obscure responsibility, since there is no ‘doer of the action’.  For example, ‘Taxes will be raised’ is a passive construction, while ‘I will raise (or lower) taxes’ is an active construction.  Five percent is considered low.

What are they saying in China?

McCain’s Speech Comes in at the Third Grade Level

Most Direct of all Speakers at Either Convention

Palin & Obama Speech Score Nearly Identical

In another finding, GLM found that both Sarah Palin’s and Barack Obama’s widely viewed (38 and 37 million viewers respectively), and much acclaimed acceptance speeches were closely similar, delivered in language that reflected a ninth grade (9.2 and 9.3 respectively) ‘reading level’.

The basic language evaluation stats are shown below.

It is widely believed that shorter sentences, words and paragraphs are easier to comprehend.

The analysis was performed by the Global Language Monitor, the media analysis and analytics agency.

GLM used a modified Flesch-Kincaid formula for its analysis, which measures factors such as number of words in a sentence, number of letters in a word, the percentage of sentences in passive voice, and other indicators of making things easier to read and, hence, understand.

This release comes in at the second year of college level (14+). 

Warning: do not incorporate these words into presidential addresses.

Top Political Buzzwords of 2008 Primary Season

Listen to the interview here:

Change, Ill-chosen Words and Race Dominate

Comments by Michelle Obama, Jeremiah Wright and both Clintons

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Austin, TX July 2, 2008 MetaNewswire — ‘Change,’ ill-chosen words by Michelle Obama, Jeremiah Wright and both Clintons, and ‘Race’ were named the Top Political Buzz Words and Phrases of the Recently concluded primary season by the Global Language Monitor in its periodic survey. The Top Ten included ‘Just Words,’ ‘Misspoke,’ ‘Inevitability,’ ‘Aloof,’ and ‘Obama a Muslim?’

The word ‘change’ remains atop the chart as it has for the last six months, however Michelle Obama’s ‘proud of my country’ comments rocketed to the No. 2 position, up from No. 5 in the previous survey, knocking the comments by Rev. Wright from the No. 2 to No. 3 position.

“The entire list is quite sobering, and rather surprising.  Sobering in the fact that the list is dominated by those issues and sound bites generated by the negative sides of the campaign.  The list is surprising in the fact that strong preponderance of the words and phrases are related to the Democratic campaign with just a handful from the Republican side,” said Paul JJ Payack, President of The Global Language Monitor (GLM).

This Sunday, the contenders’ spoken words are talk of the day

Political buzzwords are terms of phrases that become loaded with emotional freight beyond the normal meaning of the word. For example, the word surge has been in the English-language vocabulary since time immemorial. However, in its new context as an Iraq War strategy, it inspires a set of emotions in many people far beyond the norm.

The Lede (New York Times):  Has the ‘surge’ been surging?

The ranking is determined by GLM’s PQI Index, a proprietary algorithm that scours the global print and electronic media, the Internet, and blogosphere for ‘hot’ political buzzwords and then ranks them according to year-over-year change, acceleration and directional momentum. Using this methodology, GLM was the only media analytics organization that foresaw the ’04 electorate voting with their moral compasses rather than their pocketbooks.

The Hindi’s take on the latest Political Buzzwords

The Top Political Buzzwords of the Primary Season of the 2008 Presidential Campaign follows with Ranking, Buzzword, Previous Ranking, and Comment.

1. Change (1) – Number 1 buzzword of the Primary Season with an index rating 10X that of any other word or phrase..
2. ‘Proud of my country’ (5) – In the last month alone, Ms. Obama’s ‘first time’ quote is up over 200% in citations.  Apparently, Michelle plays a far larger role in this campaign than many suspect.
3. Jeremiah Wright (2) – Obama’s former pastor looms large in the media and on the web.
4. Race – (4) The word actually means ‘lineage’. The numbers say it’s more significant than most would like to hear.
5. Bill Clinton’s Jesse Jackson Comments (3) – Though fading, made a lasting impact and impression.
6. Misspoke – (10) As did her Sniper Fire episode and subsequent explanation.
7. Bosnian Sniper Fire (9) – Reverberations continued from Hillary’s ‘misspeaking’
8. Just Words (6) – Clinton’s characterization of Obama’s eloquence has had an impact.
9. Internet fundraising (8) – Obama’s adeptness in using the Internet as a primary source of funding was major buzz.
10. Inevitability (7) – Mark Penn’s Inevitability Strategy still under discussion (and derision).
11. Working Class Whites (12) – Discussion (with racial subtext) up some 500% from the beginning of the year.
12. Thrown Under the Bus (13)– Directly related to Clinton’s Kitchen Sink Strategy but also said of Obama and Reverend Wright.
13. Obama a Muslim? (14) – Though he is a proclaimed Christian, the question lingers.
14. Aloof (15) — Obama demeanor has its drawbacks according to the PQI.
15. Punditocracy (16) — Those inhabiting the Media Echo Chamber find themselves part of the story.
16. Bitter (17) – Obama’s characterization of blue-collar Pennsylvania Whites to an audience of West-Coast supporters.
17. Gender (18) — - According to the media buzz, not nearly the as dominating as the word race.
18. Experience (19) – Hillary’s original argument no longer resonant as early in the primary season.
19. Surge (20) – One of 2007’s Top Words, still used mainly in relation to Senator McCain.
20. 100 Years War (21) – The original One Hundred’s Year War actually lasted 116 years.

Words dropped from the list:  Latte Liberal and Kitchen Sink Strategy.

The Top Political Buzzwords for the 2006 Midterm Elections included: Throes, Quagmire, Credibility, Global Warming, and Insurgency.

The Top Political Buzzwords from the 2004 Presidential Campaign included: swift boats, flip flop/flopping, quagmire, Fahrenheit 911, misleader and liar!

Will the Beijing Olympics Finally Eradicate Chinglish?

  Is this the End to ‘Deformed-man Toilets’ and ‘Racist Parks’

  We think not.

Austin, Texas, USA.   July 30, 2008.   MetaNewswire.  There has been much publicity about Beijing’s vaunted attempt to eradicate Chinglish before the 2008 Games begin.  Menus at the top hotels have been replaced with standardized, albeit less poetic, versions (no more ‘exploding shrimp’.)

And many of the city’s traffic signs have been tamed (no more signposts to the Garden with Curled Poo).  “We have worked out 4,624 pieces of standard English translations to substitute the Chinglish ones on signs around the city,” said Lu Jinlan, head of the organizing committee of the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Programme (BSFLP).

Is this really the end of Chinglish, that delightful admixture of Chinese and English?

Studies by the Global Language Monitor suggest that Chinglish will persist – and even thrive – far after the Games have ended.

Chinglish is the outgrowth of several convening forces, including:

·    the widespread acceptance of English as a Global Language

·    the fact that some 250 million Chinese are currently studying English as a second, auxiliary or business language

·    he astonishing complexity and richness of the Mandarin language

·    the English language vocabulary is approaching the million word mark

·    The Chinese people evidently enjoy wearing Chinglish on their clothing

Mandarin has more than 50,000 ideograms each of which can be used to represent any number of words.  In addition, Mandarin is a tonal language meaning that tonal variations in pronunciation can distinguish one word from another.  Therefore attempting to map a precise ideogram to any particular word in the million-word English lexicon is a nearly impossible task.

The difficulty is further evidenced on the official Olympic website of the Beijing Olympic Games, http://en.beijing2008.cn, where it states that “we share the charm and joy of the Olympic Games”.  Hundreds of scholars have proofed the site and decided that the word charm is most appropriate in describing the Games.  In past Olympiads words such as ‘power’, ‘pride,’ ‘heroic,’ ‘majesty,’ ‘triumph,’ and, even, ‘tragedy’ frequently have been used to described the Olympic movement but the word ‘charm’ has largely been ignored.   Charm has a number of meanings including the ‘individuating property of quarks and other elementary particles’.  In this case, we assume the authorities were using the definition of charm as a transitive verb:  to attract or please greatly; enchant; allure; fascinate; or delight.

Finally, there is the on-going cross-pollination between English and Mandarin, with Chinglish at the epicenter of the movement.  Recently, the Ministry of Education (MOE) accepted some 171 neologisms into the Chinese language.   Words were considered only after they passed the scrutiny of a dozen scholars associated with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) Institute of Linguistics.  These included a new ideogram for ‘brokeback,’ a word popularized from the banned movie Brokeback Mountain to indicate ‘gay’.

You will find brokeback in few English-language dictionaries, but it already has been accepted into the Chinese.  Words passed over for formal entry, which despite their frequency of use were deemed inappropriate included:  “cool”, “zip it”, 3Q for “thank you” and “kick your ass”.

Recently, the Global Language Monitor listed its all-time favorite Chinglish words and phrases.  These included:

·         Deformed man toilet (handicapped restroom)

·         Airline Pulp (food served aboard airlines – no explanation necessary

·         The slippery are very crafty (slippery when wet)

·         If you are stolen, call the police

·         Do not climb the rocketry (rock wall)

Chinglish Adds Flavor to Alphabet Soup

2/19/2008 (China Daily) — San Diego-based consultancy group - Global Language Monitor claims Chinglish is adding the most spice to the alphabet soup of today’s English by contributing more words than any other single source to the global language.

And the more Chinese I learn, the more appetizing this seems.

Subscribing to the Elizabethan definition of a word as “a thing spoken and understood”, GLM is using a predictive quantities indicator (PQI) to scan the Web for emergent English words and track their mainstream use over time.

As GLM president Paul JJ Payack says: “Language colors the way you think. Thinking in Chinese is completely different.”

And every day that I learn more Chinese, the more vibrant this coloration becomes in my mind. This is mostly because of the descriptive nature of the language, in which many words are created by mixing and matching diasylobolic words to create new diasylobolic words.

Generally speaking, English is more definitional, so its words are more terminological than descriptive. For example, a “spider” is a spider - the word in itself tells you nothing about what it represents. But the Chinese word for spider (zhizhu) literally translates as “clever insect” - a description it earns in Chinese by spinning intricate webs to ensnare prey.

In Chinese, you don’t ride a bike, bus or train; you instead respectively ride a (zixinche) “self-walk vehicle”, a (gonggongqiche) “public all-together gas vehicle” or a (huoche) “fire vehicle”.

A massage is a (anmo) “press and touch”. A pimple is a (qingdou) “youth bean”. Investing is to (touzi) “throw funds”. And when you don’t make your money back, the disappointment is conveyed directly as (saoxing) “sweep interest”.

While linguists ballyhoo English’s capacity for specificity, this has in some ways become its weakness, as the definitional often trumps the descriptive, with wonderful exceptions, such as “rainbow”. But that’s where the other widely vaunted strength of the language - its capacity to ravenously gobble up other languages’ words - could become a beautiful thing. And I’m glad to know the English language is developing a growing taste for Chinese food.

In the 1960s, there were about 250 million English speakers, mostly from the United States, the United Kingdom and their former colonies.

Today, the same number of Chinese possesses some command of the language, and that number is growing. One possibility is the plethora of localized “lishes”, such as Chinglish, Hinglish (a Hindi-English hybrid) and Spanglish (an English-Spanish hybrid) could branch so far from English, they become mutually unintelligible tongues sharing a common root, much as Latin did in Medieval Europe.

Many linguists agree that if the lishes splinter, Chinglish will likely become the most prominent offshoot by virtue of sheer numbers, giving Chinese primary ownership of the language.

Perhaps then, English could become more beautiful than I could now describe - at least with its currently existing words. (Contributed by China Daily)

The Million Word March. Fueled by Chinglish?

‘No Noising’ and ‘Airline Pulp’ named Top Chinglish Words

San Diego, Calif. November 22, 2006. ‘No Noising’ and ‘Airline Pulp’ have been named the Top Chinglish Words of 2006 in The Global Language Monitor’s annual survey of the Chinese-English hybrid words known more commonly as Chinglish. Though often viewed with amusement by the rest of the English-speaking world, The Chinglish phenomenon is one of the prime drivers of Globalization of the English Language.

The Annual Survey by the Global Language Monitor

“The importance of Chinglish is the fact that some 250,000,000 Chinese are now studying, or have studied, English and their impact (and imprint) upon the language cannot be denied,” said Paul JJ Payack, President and The WordMan of the Global Language Monitor. “Since each Chinese ideogram can have many meanings and interpretations, translating ideas into English is, indeed, difficult. Nevertheless, the abundance of new words and phrases, unlikely as this may seem, can and will impact Global English as it evolves through the twenty-first century”.

With the English Language marching steadily toward the 1,000,000 word mark, there are now some 1.3 billion speakers with English as their native, second, business or technical tongue. In 1960, the number of English Speakers hovered around 250,000,000 mainly located in the UK and its Commonwealth of former colonies, and the US.

Some scholars maintain that you cannot actually count the number of words in the language because it is impossible to say exactly what a word is, talking rather of memes and other linguistic constructs, are afraid that Global English is just another form of cultural Imperialism. GLM take the classic view of the language as understood in Elisabethan England, where a word was ‘a thing spoken’ or an ‘idea spoken’.

Others say that English is undergoing a rebirth unlike any seen since the time of Shakespeare, when English was emerging as the modern tongue known to us today. (Shakespeare, himself, added about 1700 words to the Codex.) English has emerged as the lingua franca of the planet, the primary communications vehicle of the Internet, high technology, international commerce, entertainment, and the like.

Chinglish is just one of a number of the -Lishes, such as Hinglish (Hindu-English hydrid) and Singlish, that found in Singapore. A language can best be view as a living entity, where it grows just like any other living thing and is shaped by the environment in which it lives. With the continuing emergence of China on the world stage — and with the Olympics coming to Beijing in 2008, the state is now attempting to stamp-out some of the more egregious examples of Chinglish.

In its annual survey the Global Language Monitor has selected from hundreds of nominees, the top Chinglish words and Phrases of 2006.

The Top Chinglish Words and Phrases of 2006 follow:

1. “No Noising”. Translated as “quiet please!”

2. “Airline pulp.” Food served aboard an airliner.

3. “Jumping umbrella”. A hang-glider.

4. “Question Authority”. Information Booth.

5. “Burnt meat biscuit.” No it’s not something to enjoy from the North of England but what is claimed to be bread dipped in a savory meat sauce.

Bonus: GLM’s all-time favorite from previous surveys: “The Slippery are very crafty”. Translation: Slippery when wet!

Independent News (London): Chinglish Phrases on the Rise

People’s Daily (China): Global Language Monitor: Many Chinglish into English

The Sunday Times (London): Chinglish: It’s a word in a million

Click here to add your thoughts to the China Daily Online Translation Community

Chinese Translation Exam Features GLM (Section 7)

Chinglish one of the Top Words of 2005!

Read More.

Click here to Read and Listen to the Chinese Radio Int’l (CRI) Report

Top Politically (in)Correct Words of 2009

Swine Flu, Flush Toilet, Green Revolution, Minority, and Saint

named top politically (in)Correct words and phrases of 2009

The Sixth Annual Global Survey

.

Austin, Texas October 2, 2009 – Swine Flu, Flush Toilet, Green Revolution, Minority, and Saint have been named the top politically (in)Correct words and phrases of the past year according to The Global Language Monitor in its sixth annual survey of the English Language. Rounding out the top ten were the term Politically Correct, Oriental, Founding Fathers, Black Sheep, and Senior Citizen.

“Once again, we are seeing that the attempt to remove all bias from language is itself creating biases of their own,” said Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst of The Global Language Monitor. “At this point it is becoming increasingly difficult to engage in any form of public dialogue without offending someone’s sensitivities, whether right, left or center.”

The Top Politically Correct Words and Phrases for 2009 include:

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1. Swine Flu – Though hundreds of millions know of the current pandemic as Swine Flu, various governments and agencies for political motives ranging from protecting pork producers to religious sensitivity have chosen to address the virus by its formal name, influenza A(H1N1).

2. Flush Toilet – Flush toilets, toilet paper and toilet use in general are now coming under the watchful eyes of the green movement.

3. Green Revolution – In the 1960s the scientific consensus was the world was on the brink of a ‘Malthusian’ collapse. The Green Revolution changed all that, but now there are those who believe that the world has paid a “stiff price in environmental degradation”.

4. Minority – Talking about minorities is considered insensitive to minorities since this can make them feel, well, like minorities.

5. Saint – In addition to the word ‘saint,’ Oxford University Press has removed words such as ‘bishop,’ ‘chapel,’ and ‘Pentecost’ from the Junior Dictionary.

6. Politically Correct – The term politically correct has, itself, is now politically correct, Be careful how you use it.

7. Oriental – In the US considered offensive to Asians because the term is based on the geographic relationship of Asia from a Western perspective. In Europe (and in most Asian nations), however, Oriental is acceptable.

8. Founding Fathers – Though all the Signers of the American Declaration of Independence were men, this is considered sexists in some quarters. Founders, please.

9. Black Sheep – Though originally referring to the rare birth of a lamb with black fur, now considered ethnically insensitive; the same is true for Black Day, Conversely, terms like White Collar and Whiter than White all can be used to encourage a hierarchical value of skin tone.

10. Senior Citizen – In the name of ‘inclusiveness,’ the UK’s Loughborough University’s suggests replacing senior citizen with ‘older person’.

The Top Politically Incorrect Terms and Phrases for previous years include:

• 2008: “He Can’t Win” – Hillary Clinton’s coded reference to Barack Obama’s ethnic background as an insurmountable impediment to him winning the US Presidency

• 2007: Nappy-headed Ho — Radio personality Don Imus’ reference to the women on the Rutgers University championship basketball team.

• 2006: Global Warming Denier – Scientists not denying climate change, but the role of humans in the millennia-old process.

• 2005: Misguided Criminals – A BBC commentator attempts to strip away all emotion from the word ‘terrorist’ by using ‘neutral’ descriptions for those who carried out the 7/7 tube bombings.

• 2004: Master/Slave computer jargon – LA County re-labels computer documentation to remove this alleged slur that has been used for decades describing computer hierarchies.

The Global Language Monitor uses a proprietary algorithm, the Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI) to track the frequency of words and phrases in the global print and electronic media, on the Internet, throughout the Blogosphere, as well as accessing proprietary databases. The PQI is a weighted Index, factoring in: long-term trends, short-term changes, momentum, and velocity.

Word Christmas Stronger than Ever in Global Media

Contrary to assumption that “Holiday season” pushing Christmas aside

Austin, TX December 23, 2008 (Update) – The Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com) has found that contrary to the assumption that the word Christmas is being pushed aside by more secular or politically neutral terms, ‘Christmas’ is used over 600% more than ‘Holiday Season’ in the global media. GLM compared the use of Christmas along with that of ‘Holiday Season,’ ‘Xmas,’ Hanukah’ in a variety of spellings, and ‘Kwanzaa’. [Read More.]

Since the 2005 season, Christmas has been used in about 85% of all global print and electronic media citations [2008, 84.6%; 2007, 85.5%; 2006, 84.1%; 2005, 84.1%].

In the global media, Christmas accounted for about 84.6% of all citations with Holiday Season following at 12.6%, followed by Xmas (1.5%), Hanukah (0.9%) and Kwanzaa (0.3%).

On the Internet, Christmas led with 80.8% followed by Xmas (10.6%), Holiday Season (5.1%), Hanukah (2.5%), and Kwanzaa (0.7%).

Notes: The X in the word Xmas actually represents the Greek letter CHI, the first two Letters in the name Christ.

Festivus, the fictional holiday created during the hit Seinfeld television series, and Wintervale, sometimes used as a politically neutral substitute for the Christmas season were also measured with negligible results.

GLM tracked the words and phrases in the print and electronic media, on the Internet and throughout the blogosphere. The analysis also measured the global print and electronic media on its own. The results follow:

“We thought it would prove interesting to see how the holidays are actually represented in the global media,” said Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst of GLM. “We were a bit surprised to see that the much discussed secularization of Christmas in the media was nowhere as widespread as speculated.”

Top Politically inCorrect Words and Phrases for 2007

‘Nappy-Headed Ho’ Top Politically inCorrect Phrase for 2007 Closely Followed by ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’ and ‘Carbon Footprint Stomping’

Read: Shock jock named king of politically incorrect

Henderson , NV . March 21, 2008. ‘Nappy-headed Ho,’’ closely followed by ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’ and ’Carbon Footprint Stomping’ top the list of the most egregious examples of politically inCorrect language found in 2007 by the Global Language Monitor in its annual global survey. This year’s list includes words and phrases from the US , the UK , Australia , and China .

“It is no surprise that a ‘Nappy-headed Ho’ was selected as the Top Politically Incorrect word or phrase for 2007,” said Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of The Global Language Monitor (GLM). “A year later that phrase is still ricocheting about the Internet even affecting Christmas-season Santas in Australia.” The list was nominated by the GLM’s Language Police, volunteer language observers from the world over.
The Top Politically Incorrect Terms and Phrases for previous years include:

The Top Politically inCorrect Words and Phrases for 2007:

1. Nappy-headed Ho’s – Radio personality Don Imus’ reference to the women on the Rutgers University championship basketball team. ‘Nappy’ is ultimately derived from the Anglo Saxon hnoppa for the ‘wooly substance on the surface of cloth’. Combined with the word ‘ho’ — a derogratory term for women, Imus’ comments led to an uproar in the media and ultimately led to his resignation.
2. HoHoHo — Staffing company in Sydney suggesting to prospective Santas to re-phrase their traditional greeting of “ho, ho, ho” in favor of “ha, ha, ha” so as not be confused with American urban parlance, a derogatory term for women.
3. Carbon footprint stomping – The movement to flaunt carbon-intensive activities such as driving Hummers and flying private jets; a reaction to the Green movement is the height of political inCorrectness.
4. Year of the Pig Restrictions – Chinese State Television in Shanghai warns Nestle against Happy Pig New Year ads, foregoing thousands of years of Chinese Tradition, because it might inflame pork-shying minorities.
5. Three Little Pigs – according to the BBC, A retelling of the three little pigs fairy tale, called Three Little Cowboy Builders, was excluded from award consideration because judges said that “ the use of pigs raises cultural issues”. It was also found to “alienate parts of the workforce (building trade): “Is it true that all builders are cowboys, builders get their work blown down, and builders are like pigs?”
6. The ‘Race’ Card – Originally a printed card with information about a thoroughbred horse race, now used in 2008 Presidential campaign parlance as in ‘playing the race card’, meaning intentionally injecting issues of ethnicity into the campaign. The word ‘race’ is ultimately derived from the Old High German for lineage.
7. “Obesity Is Socially Contagious” — That was the widely reported headline in the UCSD press release announcing the results of a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that actually came to the opposite conclusion. One of the study’s authors made it worse by stating “It’s spread from person to person like a fashion or a germ … once it starts; it’s hard to stop it. It can spread like wildfire.”
8. Fire-breathing Dragon – Lindsey Gardiner, a leading British children’s author of the popular Lola, Poppy and Max characters, was instructed to eliminate a fire-breathing dragon from her new book because publishers feared they could be sued under health and safety regulations.
9. “Wucha dun did now?” — Handbook distributed a Houston school district police officer to enable the reader to speak “as if you just came out of the hood”.
10. Gypsy skirt – The worldwide phenomenon of the gypsy, tiered or Boho skirt has a new name: Traveler’s Skirt, since police in Cornwall believed that the term ‘Gypsy Skirt’ might be considered offensive to this cultural minority.
The Global Language Monitor uses a proprietary algorithm, the Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI) to track the frequency of words and phrases in the global print and electronic media, on the Internet, throughout the Blogosphere, as well as accessing proprietary databases. The PQI is a weighted Index, factoring in: long-term trends, short-term changes, momentum, and velocity.
GLM is moving its headquarters to Austin , Texas in the coming months.

The Top Politically inCorrect Words for 2006

Macaca, Global Warming Denier, Herstory and Flip Chart Top Annual List

San Diego, California (December 13, 2006) Macaca, Global Warming Denier, Herstory and Flip Chart top the list of the most egregious examples of politically correct language found in 2006 by the Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com) in its annual global survey.

“In 2006, the Political Correctness movement continued to gain momentum to the effect that many were unaware of the extent that it had inserted itself into ordinary English-language conversations,” said Paul JJ Payack, President of The Global Language Monitor (GLM). The year has been rife with examples that have been nominated by the GLM’s Language Police, volunteer language observers from the world over”.

The Top Politically inCorrect Words and Phrases for 2006:

1. Macaca – Might have changed the political balance of the US Senate, since George Allen’s (R-VA) utterance (which is an offensive slang term for Indians of the Sub-continent in the West Indies) surely has impacted his election bid.

2. Global Warming Denier – Since there are those who now believe that climate changed has moved from scientific theory to dogma; there are now proposal that ‘global warming deniers’ be treated the same as ‘holocaust deniers:’ professional ostracism, belittlement, ridicule and, even, jail.

3. Herstory for History – ‘Herstory’ again attempts to take the male element out of ‘HIS story’. Though there are nearly 900,000 Google citations for ‘HERstory, they are all based on a mistaken assumption. When Herodotus wrote the first history, the word meant simply an ‘inquiry’.

4. Flip Chart. The term can be offensive to Filipinos, please use ‘writing block’.

5. 1a and 1b — The headmistress of a grade school in Midlothian (Scotland) had to split a grade into two equal classes. Though the split was purely alphabetical, parents objects because those with children in ‘1b’ feared they may be perceived as academically inferior to those in ‘1a’.

6. Politically Incorrect Colors — Staff at a coffee shop in Glasgow refused to serve a customer who had ordered a ‘black coffee’, believing it to be ‘racist.’ He wasn’t served until he changed his order to ‘coffee without milk’. Around the world we have reports of the word ‘black’ becoming emotionally charged and politically correct or incorrect depending upon one’s point of view.

7. Oriental – Asian, please. Though this is generally a purely American phenomenon. In Europe, Asians prefer the term Oriental, which literally means ‘those from the East’.

8. Menaissance – The rise of a ‘manliness’ culture or male renaissance. Replaces metrosexual, which evidently appealed to women but not men.

9. Momtini — A Michigan mother invented the term ‘momtini’ as an act of rebellion against ‘parental correctness’. This has raised the hackles of child protection and ‘anti-alcohol’ groups.

10. “Our Mother and Father Who are in Heaven” – From a new, ‘inclusive’ Bible translation (The Bible in a More Just Language) that replaces what it believes to be “divisive” teachings of Christianity.

Bonus: Political Correctness — ‘Equality Essentials,’ a 44-page training manual book called has been used for staff training courses at Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire suggests that the term Political Correctness is now politically incorrect.

Top Words for 2005 and 2004

The Top Politically Incorrect Words for 2005 were the BBC’s use of the euphemism ‘Misguided Criminals’ for Terrorists after the 7/7 Tube Bombings.

In 2004, the List was highlighted by Los Angeles County’s insistence of covering over with labels any computer networking protocols that mention master/slave jargon.

Top Politically (in)Correct Words for 2005

Misguided Criminals, Intrinsic appitude, and Thought Shower Top List

Top Politically (in)Correct Words
San Diego, California (Updated November 29, 2005) Misguided Criminals, Intrinsic Aptitude, and Thought Shower top the list of the most egregious examples of politically correct language found in 2005 by the Global Language Monitor in its annual global survey. This year’s list includes words from the US, UK, France and Australia.

“2005 was the year we saw the Political Correctness movement become a truly global phenomenon,” said Paul JJ Payack, President of The GlobalLanguage Monitor (GLM). “The list is but one more example of the insertion of politics into every facet of modern life.”

The year has been rife with examples that have been nominated by the GLM’s Language Police, volunteer language observers from the world over.

Click here to Watch WCCO’s Video (Minneapolis)

Click here to Read and Listen to the Chinese Radio Int’l (CRI) Report

The Top Politically inCorrect Words and Phrases for 2005:

1. Misguided Criminals for Terrorist: The BBC attempts to strip away all emotion by using what it considers neutral descriptions when describing those who carried out the bombings in the London Tubes. The rub: the professed intent of these misguided criminals was to kill, without warning, as many innocents as possible (which is the common definition for the term, terrorist). The phrase was selected by GLM as but one example in line with the published BBC Editorial Guidelines where it is noted that the word ‘terrorist’ itself can be a barrier rather than aid to understanding. Suggested alternatives include: bomber, attacker, insurgent and militant, among others. These and similar words are deemed to have no emotional or value judgments. However, the word Terrorist can be used as long as it appears in a quoted attribution. [To see one example used by John Simpson, BBC World Affairs Editor, Click Here.]

2. Intrinsic Aptitude (or lack thereof) was a suggestion by LawrenceSummers, the president of Harvard, on why women might be underrepresented in engineering and science. He was nearly fired for his speculation.

3. Thought Shower or Word Shower substituting for brainstorm so as not to offend those with brain disorders such as epilepsy.

4. Scum or “la racaille” for French citizens of Moslem and North African descent inhabiting the projects ringing FrenchCities. France’s Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, used this most Politically inCorrect (and reprehensible) label to describe the young rioters (and by extension all the inhabitants of the Cites).

5. Out of the Mainstream when used to describe theideology of any political opponent: At one time slavery was in the mainstream, thinking the sun orbited the earth was in the mainstream, having your blood sucked out by leeches was in the mainstream. What’s so great about being in the mainstream?

6. Deferred Success as a euphemism for the word fail. The Professional Association of Teachers in the UK considered a proposal to replace any notion of failure withdeferred success in order to bolster students self-esteem.

7. Womyn for Women to distance the word from man. This in spite of the fact that the term man in the original Indo-European is gender neutral (as have been its successors for some 5,000 years).

8. C.E. for A.D.: Is the current year A.D. 2005 or 2005 C.E.? There is a movement to strip A.D.(Latin for “In the Year of the Lord”) from the year designation used in the West since the 5th century and replace it with the supposedly moreneutral Common Era (though the zero reference year for the beginning of the Common Era remains the year of Christ’s birth).

9. “God Rest Ye Merry Persons” for “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”: A Christmas, eh, Holiday, carol with 500 years of history isnot enough to sway the Anglican Church at Cardiff Cathedral (Wales) from changing the original lyrics. There are those who suggest going one step further: “Higher Power Rest Ye Merry Persons”.

10. Banning the word Mate: the Department ofParliamentary Services in Canberra issued a general warning to its security staff banning the use of the word ‘mate’ in dealings t with both members of Parliament and the public. What next? banning ‘no worries’ so as not to offend the worried, or banning ‘Down Under’ So as not to offend those of us who live in the “Up Over”.

HolidayBonus: Happy Holidays or Season’s Greetings for Christmas (which in some UK schools now label Wintervale). However, the word holiday is derived directly from Holy Day, and in the word X-Mas, the Greek letter ‘chi’ represented by the Roman X actually stands for the first two letters of the name Christ.) Now there are published reports of organization banning the traditional Christmas Colours of red and green.

Last year the Top Politically Incorrect words were: Los Angeles Countys insistence of covering over with labels any computer networking protocols that mention master/slave jargon. Following closelywere same-sex marriage for marriage and waitron for waiter of waitress.

Australia bans the word ‘mate’

GLM’S Language Police suggest these others: ‘No Worries’, ‘Down Under’, ‘Barbie’, etc.

San Diego, Calif. August 24, 2005. Last week, the Department of Parliamentary Services in Canberra, issued a general warning to its security staff banning the use of the word ‘mate’ in any dealings they might have with both members of the Parliament and the public. Almost immediately, Australian Prime Minister John Howard called the ban “absurd” while the Opposition labeled it “un-Australian”. The ban has since been rescinded.

In direct response, the Global Language Monitor polled its readers (and enquired of its Language Police) to come up with further suggestions of slang words and informal language that might serve the public interest by being banned in Australia. Earlier today, as a service to the international linguistic ‘mateship’ or community, GLM released its List.

“We believe that if the Department of Parliamentary Services had a list of “Further Slang terms and Colloquialisms fit to be Avoided, Shunned, or Otherwise Banned,” these are the words that would populate such a List,” said Paul JJ Payack, President and the WordMan for the Global Language Monitor. “To make the List, words had to be innocuous in themselves, but in the context of Political Correctness, potentially offensive to some segment of the populace”.

Recently, the BBC’s use of the term ‘misguided criminals’ and ‘bombers’ when referring to the perpetrators of the recent London blasts stirred an international debate on politically correct language. The BBC used those words to replace the term ‘terrorist’, which according to the BBC can “carry emotional or value judgments”.

GLM’s List is an ongoing compilation; currently the list of words to be potentially banned with associated commentary follows:

Barbeque — The shortened form, barbie, can be an invidious reference to the Barbie doll, and hence sexist.

Abso-bloody-lutely — Though the term bloody can signify an intensive, this use could also heighten insensitivity to the plight of farm animals that animal rights activists have long warned against.

Down Under — Down Under signifies the existence of an Up Over, which obviously is in the superior position of Uppness. Might be taken as ignoring the very real consequences of the North/South global divisions.

G’day — G’day is the shortened form of ‘Good Day’. Some etymologists believe that good can be ultimately traced to an earlier word for God. Hence, G’day could represent a conspiracy to insinuate the theistic world view into everyday life.

Mate — From classmates at male boarding schools. Obviously sexist, also elitist.

Nappy — Diaper, might offend those who illegally download music to their hard drives, and narcoleptics.

No Worries — This is offensive to those with OCD, and others who are plagued by constant self-doubt and apprehension.

Plonk — Inexpensive wine (in the US it’s called ripple). Plonk is perhaps a contraction of vin blanc; this might offend francophones.

Ta — Thank you. In the spirit International Harmony, the French s’il vous plait is preferred.

Vegemite — A plot to foist upon a defenseless world, the supposed utopian ideal of what a meatless sandwich might be.

Zed — The letter Z. Not exactly slang, but a candidate for banishment nonetheless on general principles.

Nought — the number ‘zero’. If this caught on, the English-speaking world might finally have a name for the first decade of the 21st century: the Noughties.

To contribute to the List, CLICK HERE.

To Read the Story from the Aussie perspective, CLICK HERE.

‘Terrorist’ Or ‘Bomber’?

BBC Stirs Debate on Political Correctness

Filtering Events of All Emotional Content?

San Diego, California (July 15, 2005) The BBC’s use of the term ‘misguided criminals’ and ‘bombers’ when referring to the perpetrators of the recent London blasts have stirred an international debate on politically correct language. The words replace the term terrorist, which according to the BBC can “carry emotional or value judgments”.

According to the Global Language Monitor’s exclusive PQ (Political-sensitivity Quotient) Index, the term ‘terrorist’ appears 700% more frequently on the web than ‘bomber’ when linked to terror-related activities such as suicide bombings, and the like. When tracking global news articles only, the word ‘bomber’ can be found in about 40% of the articles, though usually in combination with ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorist-related’ words. The phrase ‘misguided criminals’ is found only about 5000 times on the entire web, many times linked to the emerging BBC story.

BBC guidelines state that credibility should never be undermined by the “careless use of words which (sic) carry emotional or value judgments”.

“The primary function of a news organization is to detail events as they occur in their existing cultural milieu, thereby recording the first draft of history. The BBC seems concerned with overstepping this boundary into what was once called yellow journalism. The greater danger here is to filter emotion-laden events of all emotional content in their pursuit of the non-judgmental,” said Paul JJ Payack, President (and the WordMan) of the Global Language Monitor.

The PQ Index is a proprietary algorithm that tracks politically sensitive words and phrases in the print. The words and phrases are tracked in relation to their frequency, contextual usage and appearance in global media outlets, thereby separating the spin and the hype from the facts. The PQ Index is published quarterly.

Political Correctness Advocates Rail Against Western Calendar

A.D. 2005 or 2005 C.E.?

The Traditional Western Practice is to Reckon Time from the Birth of Jesus

San Diego, Calif. May 16, 2005. MetaNewswire. A small but vocal element is voicing opposition to the traditional Western practice of dividing time, measuring events as occurring before or after the birth of Jesus or B.C and A.D., according to a survey by The Global Language Monitor (GLM), using the Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI).

The survey found that in the worldwide electronic and print media, and on the Internet, the current convention of A.D. and B.C. was found to be nearly 50 times as prevalent as that of the C.E. and B.C.E. convention. Nevertheless, the fact that the newer conventions were now found to be used at all indicates significant inroads, where until recently none existed.

The C.E. and B.C.E. conventions were introduced about a century ago in the Jewish and Scientific communities, but have been adopted increasingly by those who want to place some distance or obscure the Judeo-Christian roots of Western Civilization. The issue has become increasingly polarizing on college campuses, school textbook publishers, and in the various religious communities.

The Western Calendar is especially pervasive because all major electronic and computer systems have it deeply embedded in their basic instruction sets, or operating systems. This means that all electronic commerce, commercial applications, scientific, airlines, electronic games, automobiles, clocks, etc. are based on the Western Calendar.

“As with most language-based PC issues, the battle is intense, however, no authority or group can mandate linguistic change, said Paul JJ Payack, President of The Global Language Monitor. “The fact is that both C.E. or A.D. both acknowledge the centrality of Jesus to the Western Calendar, (actually shorthand for Western Christendom), since both A.D. and C.E. both refer to the birth of Jesus as the time marker for the West.”

(In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the revolutionaries made anill-fated and short-lived attempt to restart the Western Calendar, which was to begin on September 22, 1792: the day of the declaration of the first French Republic. Months were cited by Roman numerals and named after meteorological conditions.)

Payack added, “Jesus, of course, was born in 749 AUC (ab urbe condita) from the founding of the City), since the Roman Calendar was dated from the mythical founding of the City by Romulus in 753 B.C. It is also interesting to note that when Dominus Exiguus, the 5th Century monk, created the current Calendar, he miscalculated, which is why it is now generally accepted that Jesus was born in the year 4 B.C, that is four years before the year of his birth.”

There are several major calendar systems in addition to the Western system currently in use. These include the Hebrew, Islamic, Buddhist, and Chinese.

The Hebrew Calendar dates from the Creation (current year 5765); the Islamic Calendar dates from the Hegira (current year 1425); the Chinese Calendar dates from the Emperor Huangdi, in 2637 B.C.; and the Buddhist Calendar dates from the birth of the Buddha, 543 years B.C., making 2005 the year 2548 of the Buddhist Era.

The Predictive Quantities Indicator is a proprietary algorithm that tracks specified words and phrases in the media and on the Internet. The words and phrases are tracked in relation to their frequency, contextual usage and appearance in global media outlets. In this case, the words tracked were Anno Domini (A.D., literally Year of the Lord), Before Christ (B.C.), the Common Era (C.E.) and Before the Common Era (B.C.E.)

Politically inCorrect PCs

Top Politically Correct Word List of 2004

Master/Slave Tech Terms Raise Eyebrows in L.A.

Danville, California (December 4, 2004) Los Angeles County’s insistence on covering over with labels any computer networking protocols that mention master/slave jargon, has been chosen the top example of political correctness in language for 2004 .

“We found Master/Slave to be but the most egregious example of political correctness in 2004,” said Paul JJ Payack, President of The Global Language Monitor. “This is but one more example of the insertion of politics into every facet of modern life, down to the level of the control processes of computer technology.”

In computer networking terminology, master/slave is commonly used to describe a device or process that has captured (and involuntarily) controls one or more devices or processes. The year has been rife with examples that have been nominated by the GLMs Language Police, volunteer language observers from the world over.

The Top Politically Correct Words and Phrases for 2004:

1. Device for master and captured device for slave in computer networking terminology

2. Non-same sex marriage, for marriage used in Democratic Presidential Primaries

3. Waitron for waiter or waitress

4. Red Sox Lover for Yankee Hater during the ALCS playoffs

5. Higher Power for God

6. Progressive for classical liberal

7. Incurious rather than more impolite invectives for President Bush (such as idiot or moron)

8. Insurgents substituting for terrorists in Iraq

9. Baristas rather than waitrons

10. First year student rather than Freshman, though Frosh is still acceptable

Top Politically Correct Words (Russia)

Master/Slave in the Times of Oman

Master/Slave is the Most Offensive Term (India)

The View from The Ukraine

Computer Term Named the Most un-PC (South Africa)

The View from China

TechTarget’s Dictionary of Computer Terms

The View on the Controversy From Down Under

Master/Slave Most Politicially Incorrect Phrase (ABC News)

Number of Living Languages:  6,912

Number of Words in the English Language:  998,773

Number of words in various langauges

Chinese (various dialects): 500,000 +

French: 100,000

German: 185,000

Russian: 195,000

Spanish: 225,000 +

Japanese: 232,000

Hindi: 120,000

Arabic: 45,000 (though used in many more variations)

Toki Pona:  197

Top Languages on the Internet

1 to 10 in 1,000 Languages

Number of Living Languages by Country

Top Spoken Languages in the World

Average American Vocabulary:  14,000 words
(Consensus Estimate.)

Shakespeare’s Vocabulary:  24,000 words+
(Various concordances.)

Number of Words Invented by Shakespeare:  1,700+
(Various concordances.)

Words in the King James Bible:

• 12,143 individual words in the English,
• 783,137 total words,
• 8,674 individual words in the Hebrew Old Testament
• 5,624 individual words in the Greek New Testament

Number of words (neologisms) invented by Shakespeare: 1,700+

Number of words invented by Thomas Jefferson: 150

Number of words invented by President Bush: 25+

Useful Language Links:

• Endangered Languages (SIL)
• The Endangered Language Foundation
• International Clearing House
• Terralingua: Partnerships for Linguistic & Biological Diversity

Top Television Buzzwords of 2008

Beijing tops ObamaSpeak as the Top Teleword of the Year followed by ‘facts are stubborn things’, ‘it is what it is,’ and Phelpsian.  

The Global Language Monitor’s Fifth Annual Analysis

Austin, Texas, USA.   September 24, 2008. The Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com) today announced the top words impacting Global English for the recently ended 2008 television season.  The Top Teleword was Beijing as in Beijing Olympics, an appropriate honor for the most watched television program of all time followed by ObamaSpeak, John Adams’ phrase ‘facts are stubborn things’, the ubiquitous  ‘it is what it is,’ and Phelpsian.  Rounding out the Top Ten were Third Screen, Vincible, Lip Synching, Lipstick (as ‘in on a pig’), and IPTV. 

“As always, words stemming from Television’s three screens, impacted Global English in interesting, innovative, and always fascinating ways,” said Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of GLM. “This year, two events dominated television, the Beijing Olympics and the US Presidential Elections”

The Top Telewords of the 2008 season with commentary follow:

1.     Beijing: The Beijing Olympics were the most-watched television show of all time with some 4.7 billion global viewers. 

2.     ObamaSpeak:  Words coined to describe the Obama Barack phenomenon, including obamamentum, obamabot, obamacize, obamarama, and obamaNation.

3.     “It is, what it is”:  Everywhere on the tube this year from “The Wire” to the Roger Clemons Steroid in Baseball Congressional hearings.

4.      “Facts are stubborn things”:  John Adams’ quaint turn of phrase for ‘it is what it is’.  The John Adams biopic won the most Emmys ever for a single program.

5.     Phelpsian:  New word coined to describe the Phelpsian Pheat of winning eight golds in a single Olympics.

6.     Third Screen:  Watching Television on your TV (first screen), your computer (second screen), and now your mobile device, the third screen.

7.     Vincible:  The invincible New England Patriots prove vincible after all, with a shocking upset by the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII.

8.     Lip Synching:  The fate of Lin Miaoke, the little girl who didn’t sing the song the whole world sings in the Olympics opening ceremony.

9.     Lipstick:  On a pig or otherwise, a media sensation this year for a supposed characterization of Republican VP aspirant Sarah Pallin.

10.  IPTV:  Internet protocol-based television, the wave of the future.

The Top Telewords of previous years were:

2007:  “Surge” from the Iraq War political and military strategy, “That’s Hot®” Paris Hilton’s popular expression that is now a registered trademark, and “D’oh!” from The Simpsons and The Simpsons Movie.

2006:   ‘Truthiness’ and ‘Wikiality’ from  the Colbert Show followed by ‘Katrina’, ‘Katie,’ and ‘Dr. McDreamy’.

2005:  ‘Refugee’ from the coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, followed by ‘Desperation’ from Desperate Housewives and ‘Camp Cupcake’ from the on-going Martha Stewart follies.

2004:  “You’re Fired!” edged “Mess O’ Potamia” followed by “Girlie Men,” “God,” and “Wardrobe Malfunction”.

Top Television Buzzwords of 2007

“Surge,” “That’s Hot” “D’oh!” & “Blackout”

Top Television Buzzwords Impacting English Language

In ‘06, ‘Truthiness’ and ‘Wikiality’ were named Top Television Buzzwords followed by ‘Katrina’, ‘Katie,’ and ‘Dr. McDreamy’

San Diego. September 16, 2007. The Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com) named “Surge” from the Iraq War political and military strategy, “That’s Hot®” Paris Hilton’s popular expression that is now a registered trademark, “D’oh!” from The Simpsons and The Simpsons Movie, and “Blackout” from the Sopranos series finale as the top television buzzwords impacting Global English for the 2007 Season. Closely following are “YaTTA!” from Heroes and “McEmmys” from Grey’s Anatomy. Rounding out the Top Ten are “I like to have the answers before I ask the questions” from The Closer, “No miniskirts after 35!” from What Not to Wear, “Scranton” from The Office, “Oy vey!” from Criminal Minds, and “Peek, Copy and Save” from Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

“This year’s annual list capture’s the spirit of the times, for better or for worse. Themes, stars and shows may change at an every quickening pace, but this only reflects the world in which we live, more than we’d ever like to admit”, said Paul JJ Payack, president and Chief Word Analyst of the Global Language Monitor. Payack also mentioned that the word surge is a very strong contender for overall Word of the Year to be announced by the Global Language Monitor in December.

The Television Buzzwords are nominated by GLM’s Language Police, volunteer language observers scattered the world over. The words are then run through the Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI}, the proprietary algorithm that analyzes the global print and electronic media, the Internet, and blogosphere and then ranks the words according to year-over-year change, acceleration and directional momentum.

The Top TeleWORDS are released in conjunction with 59th Primetime Emmy Awards, broadcast on the Fox Television Network on Sunday, September 16, from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Top TellyWORDS for Impact Upon the English Language in 2007 with commentary follows.

1. Surge (Iraq War) ­ – A military and political strategy, on the lips of every politician.

2. “That’s Hot®!” (Paris Hilton) – Hilton owns the trademark to the phrase “That’s hot,” which was registered on Feb. 13th. What’s next? Britney trademarking ‘public breakdown’.

3. D’oh (The Simpsons) – As in dough, as the Simpsons’ leap to the silver screen grosses $485 million and counting.

4. Blackout (The Sopranos) – The series-ending episode redefined the word ‘cliffhanger’ since there was no ‘hanging’ about the cliff in any way, shape or form, rather a sharp plunge into the abyss.

5. YaTTA! (Heroes) – YaTTA! narrowly beats out “WTF, is going to happen now?”