OUP Conference 26 August 2010, Budapest. “Opening Words!”

Simon Ingram-Hill, Director, British Council, Hungary

“Vuvuzela, Staycation” screamed the headline. What on earth was I reading? I looked further “LBD”, “chillax”, “fog of war”, “turducken”, “tweet-up”. Interesting, I thought. Where was I? Well I was in the UK. It was Friday last week, August 20th , and I had just picked up the newspaper The Independent and was flicking through the front page. But so many words, that I sort of recognised but really wasn’t sure where they had come from or, in some cases , what they meant.

But yes indeed the headline and article was announcing the publication of the 3rd edition of Oxford Dictionary of English, and that 2000 new words had been added to the dictionary since the previous edition 7 years before.

As we all know, language is creative and dynamic, like life itself. It never stands still. And the English language, not least, is on the move and nowhere more obviously than in its content words, the vocabulary that we use. Words get dropped from use, others change in meaning, but I would just like to pause for a few minutes on some of those words which have entered the English language and wonder where they have come from and why they have been created?

First, why do we need new words? Because, to express ourselves, our ideas and identities, we sometimes find there simply isn’t the right word already in the lexicon to meet our needs. The world around us, the one that we interact with and respond to, dictates sometimes the creation of new words to give new meanings. This summer’s football world cup introduced to many of us watching TV and hearing the constant baying of background trumpet/claxon sounds the name “Vuvuzela” to describe the instrument that so many were blowing. It’s actually not a new word but was new to English speakers, being brought in from Spanish speaking countries.

In the last 7 years, our world has changed dramatically. We have had a serious economic crisis, we have made huge advances in the use of internet, and climate security has become one of the dominant issues of our time. And we have had to create new words to express ourselves on all these subjects.

The financial crisis has given us such terms as “staycation”, “toxic debt” and “quantitative easing”. Let’s just take “staycation”. This is a term invented in USA. If it had been invented in UK we might have come up with “stoliday” or “holistay”. What does it mean? a period of time in which an individual or family stays at home and relaxes at home or in the home environment; holiday-makers have become more sedentary because of the financial crisis and the need to spend less. Last year, many British stayed at home when the pound was weak rather than travel to favourite destinations like Budapest. I live in the Var and when I arrived last August; I kept hearing that tourist numbers were down, well that was because they were having staycations or stolidays. The origin of these words is quite interesting if obvious. Stay and Vacation. There’s also “naycation” which means absolutely no travel at all..

Climate change and the environment has given us “green-collar worker”, “geo-engineering”, “climate capture and storage”. I like green-collar worker because I was brought up in a world of white-collar and blue-collar workers and it doesn’t surprise me that a green-collar worker is a worker who is employed in the environmental sector of the economy.

In the world of the internet, we have coined (and we rarely know who has coined) such terms as “micro-blogging”,. “social media”, “dictionary attack”, “paywall” and “tweet-up”.

Looking at an online dictionary (not Oxford this time) we can see that although the concepts which have brought these words into being are new, the process by which they are created is familiar. Just take the word “tweet” – the word to describe a completely new phenomenon of communicating by very short messages of electronic text, has been created by a metaphor from the communication of birds. Then if you search on the web you might be amazed at how many “tweet-related” words there are (today if not tomorrow) 10? 20? No, 102. – not counting hyphenated words: Here are just a few – in which I’m sure you can see some very familiar processes of word creation: A person who tweets can be a “tweetie”, or a “tweetaholic” or even a “tweetdropper”. He or she may be unhappily “tweetless” or in a state of “tweetlessness”, or even “tweetjacked”. And indeed he or she may be tempted to use a “tweetionary” to discover the “tweetymology” of his words.

So to sum up, the vocabulary, the words that we use are part of a dynamic, creative language world that we inhabit: It’s a serious world which answers our needs to define and express ourselves and the impact that the world is having on us. It’s a fun world in that we are all creators of the language, and maybe just maybe a word that we have created might end up as common usage. And if you are lucky it may end up in the next edition of the Oxford Dictionary. I will leave you with one word from the world of food to whet your appetites: “turducken” spelt tur, duck, en. If you don’t know what it means look it up!

Before I finish I want to say 2 things. First I work for the British Council so I am proud to mention that we have some brilliant interactive vocabulary courses and games that are linked to i-phones and other mobile devices. You can find out more about them by checking in at our stand and talking to Zita and colleagues: Wordshake. Wordbook, 60-second Word Challenge, Johnny’s Grammar Quizmaster are worth your logging on to and are particularly targeted at the technologies popular with young people.

Second and last, I’d like to thank the organisers, OUP and especially Ilona Jobbagy for inviting me today. This is a great event and an important topic – it’s fun and it’s serious and I wish you well for the rest of today. And not least – buy the 3rd edition! It gives me great pleasure to declare this conference open.