(~3 minutes to read)

If only social media had been around in Shakespeare’s day.

Back in February, an eight-year-old Italian boy used the word “petaloso” in a classroom assignment. The word doesn’t officially exist in the Italian language (apparently Italian has an equivalent of l’académie française called the Accademia della Crusca), so the boy’s teacher marked it as an incorrect word, but she also thought it was a useful word, so she helped the boy enquire about it being adopted into the language.

It turns out that you need to have a large number of people using a word before La Crusca will consider its adoption.

Enter social media. The teacher posted the word and the associated exchange of correspondence on Facebook, and to date, it has been shared 98,000 times. Twitter users (twits?) also helped spread the word (literally), and even La Crusca itself pitched in. This effort earned attention from a publisher, a Prime Minister, Rome’s tourist authorities, and others.

All kinds of bloggers and websites have picked up on the story, and reaction is mixed, from “what’s the big deal?” to enthusiastic embracement of the word.

And the word is plastered over the wonderweb now. Wiktionary already has an entry for the word, and has marked it as a neologism. There’s a www.petaloso.com and if I correctly understand Google’s translation of the website’s home page, it appears to be attempting to make money on the brand, although it’s waiting on clarification of trademark registration (which it seems several organizations are attempting).

A Big Deal?

Just what is the story here? That a new word has been created in the Italian language? That an eight-year-old is capable of creating a “well-formed” word? That an eight-year-old and his teacher set out to get it socially and officially adopted? That social media was used to deliberately spread the word? That the coining of a word has been sped up dramatically by social media?

All of the above?

If this had happened in a school in an English-speaking country, it wouldn’t have created a stir, because there is no policing of the English language. English has no pride—it’ll adopt anything that’s useful.

Logically Though…

So if there is no policing of the English language, and if an Italian teacher would go to such great lengths to ensure her student gets ten out of ten for his language test, it follows that a similarly enlightened and caring teacher of the English language would have to give her student an “A” if the student had created a new and etymologically-plausible word.

Let’s say that little Johnny came up with “telefenestration”(he’s a smart lad) and Ms. Jones saw that although it’s an unknown word, it’s well-formed and of potential use. Would she mark the word wrong? Would she sing its praises to Johnny? Would she then plaster it all over the internet on social media websites? If she does, I hope she uses a Windows computer (arf arf).

The Argument for an English Language Academy?

If the above logic holds water, it would seem to make a case for the official protection of the English language from a deluge of elementary school words being hawked on Facebook. Otherwise, it would only be a matter of time before Microsoft started to describe the mandatory, remote uninstallation of pirate copies of its software as teledefenestration. If they do, then I hope little Johnny sends them the bill.

If only social media had been around in Shakespeare’s day.