If only social media had been around in Shakespeare\u2019s day.<\/p>\n
Back in February, an eight-year-old Italian boy used the word \u201cpetaloso\u201d in a classroom assignment. The word doesn\u2019t officially exist in the Italian language (apparently Italian has an equivalent of l\u2019acad\u00e9mie fran\u00e7aise called the Accademia della Crusca), so the boy\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
It turns out that you need to have a large number of people using a word before La Crusca<\/em> will consider its adoption.<\/p>\n 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<\/em> itself pitched in. This effort earned attention from a publisher, a Prime Minister, Rome\u2019s tourist authorities, and others.<\/p>\n All kinds of bloggers and websites have picked up on the story, and reaction is mixed, from \u201cwhat\u2019s the big deal?\u201d to enthusiastic embracement of the word.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s a www.petaloso.com and if I correctly understand Google\u2019s translation of the website\u2019s home page, it appears to be attempting to make money on the brand, although it\u2019s waiting on clarification of trademark registration (which it seems several organizations are attempting).<\/p>\n 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 \u201cwell-formed\u201d 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?<\/p>\n All of the above?<\/p>\n If this had happened in a school in an English-speaking country, it wouldn\u2019t have created a stir, because there is no policing of the English language. English has no pride\u2014it\u2019ll adopt anything that\u2019s useful.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cA\u201d if the student had created a new and etymologically-plausible word.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say that little Johnny came up with \u201ctelefenestration\u201d(he\u2019s a smart lad) and Ms. Jones saw that although it\u2019s an unknown word, it\u2019s 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).<\/p>\n 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 telede<\/em>fenestration. If they do, then I hope little Johnny sends them the bill.<\/p>\n If only social media had been around in Shakespeare\u2019s day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If only social media had been around in Shakespeare\u2019s day. Back in February, an eight-year-old Italian boy used the word \u201cpetaloso\u201d in a classroom assignment. The word doesn\u2019t officially exist in the Italian language (apparently Italian has an equivalent of l\u2019acad\u00e9mie fran\u00e7aise called the Accademia della Crusca), so the boy\u2019s teacher marked it as an incorrect word, but she also… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[74,76,72,75,73],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fake","tag-harness-social-media","tag-neologism","tag-petaloso","tag-shakespeare","tag-word-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1552,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions\/1552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A Big Deal?<\/h1>\n
Logically Though…<\/h1>\n
The Argument for an English Language Academy?<\/h1>\n