nf1271: i'll start off by telling you about a situation that i was in a few years ago where i was interviewed for local radio they they asked me to come along to the radio studios in namex er to talk about words and er when the interviewer started asking me questions i realized that what he really wanted to know was er who decides which words go into a dictionary and he had an idea that there was such a thing as the dictionary and that this contained all the correct words in English and that if a word wasn't in the dictionary then it wasn't a proper English word and you couldn't use it proper-, you if you used it you were wrong er that's quite a common belief in Britain er we play i-, in Britain we play a lot of er games which involve checking words in dictionaries Scrabble do you do you know Scrabble ss: yeah nf1271: yeah i-, it it's quite a common game and it to resolve arguments it's necessary to look in a dictionary and people always say look in the dictionary as if there was only one er people seem to assume that there's someone or some group of people h-, who have the responsibility deciding which words are good enough to go in the dictionary and which words are not er well that's that's a completely wrong idea really isn't it you've only got to go to a bookshop to see that there's many more than one dictionary there isn't really any such thing as the dictionary is there er if you go along to the bookshop here for instance er huh sm1272: look at the screen sf1273: now nf1271: oh yes suddenly the screen and the bulb's gone nf1271: er this is just a a very rough summary of the kind of dictionaries that we have in English we have the the Oxford English Dictionary and that's the largest dictionary in en-, in the English language it's in twenty volumes with supplements er you'd think that that's what people would be referring to when they say is it in the dictionary but of course they're not er very few people possess a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary it's really only for linguists and people who are er work people who work with the English language in some way er y-, y-, you can get it on C-D-ROM which is much easier but if you all twenty volumes take up a lot of spa-, er shelf space and they're very expensive so that's not usually the dictionary that people refer to when they when they play Scrabble for instance er then we've got the Shorter Oxford Dictionary the New Oxford Dictionary of English er those are pretty big dictionaries i've got a C-D-ROM version of the New Oxford Dictionary in English here three-hundred-and-fifty-thousand words er by the way we have names for these we call er we call the Shorter Oxford Dictionary SOD [laughter] and the New Oxford Dictionary of English NODDY [laughter] that's your if you write about dictionaries you use these er acronyms but er er then we've got dictionaries for learners of English er you'll be familiar with some of these Oxford Advanced Learners' Dictionary Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Cambridge internitinational Dictionary of English Cobuild er i see people coming into the bookshop and not knowing which dictionary to buy because in fact the titles don't really tell you do they they those those four er that are listed there are not for native they're not intended for native speakers of English they're in-, intended for learners but there's nothing in the title to tell you that and so i see people who are not native speakers of English hovering around in the bookshop not knowing which dictionary to choose because there's no real indication on the cover who is who is it who they're intended for and then of course we've got hundreds of thousands of other kinds of dictionaries we've got shorter versions of those dictionaries for learners shorter versions of the big dictionaries at the top and then we've got dictionaries for children and picture dictionaries and school dictionaries and visual dictionaries study dictionaries and something right at the bottom of the transparency [laughter] er [laughter] right at the bottom of the transparency er we've got something that we call they're called dictionaries you might have seen them you may have a dictionary like this dictionary of engineering terms something like that er they're called dictionaries but really they're not dictionaries they're more like encyclopedias because a dictionary is concerned with er the way the word is used in the language a dictionary is concerned with er l-, linguistic aspects of the word like its pronunciation its grammar which words it goes with and these dictionaries of medicine and engineering and computing computer science applied linguistics they don't tell you anything about the behaviour of that word or how it's pronounced or what the grammar is they just tell you about the concepts that the words expresses so they're really much more like encyclopedias or little textbooks they're not strictly speaking dictionaries so that alone should show you should prove to you that the radio interviewer had completely the wrong idea er there isn't a single dictionary there isn't we can't say is it in the dictionary there is no such thing as the dictionary er you know i often hear it said people say is oh look in the dictionary i say which dictionary there are hundreds thousands of dictionaries to choose from and they're all different they all have different selections of words in and they all give different slightly different definitions for each of those words so there isn't a single authority on the other hand er the radio interviewer was right he had got sort of the right idea because er there people who compile dictionaries do have to select there are there really is a group of people who select which words go into each dictionary and which words don't go in er and the reason for this is that there are actually far far too many words in English to put into any dictionary even a really big one so they've got to make a selection they've got to decide which words go in and which words stay out er i think it was last year i was looking on an Internet mailing list er you know they have these er chats and somebody had written in and said i i'm having an argument with my German girlfriend think he was American he said er i say there are more words in the English language and my girlfriend says there are more words in the German language which of us is right right [laughter] well it's impossible question really isn't it but er somebody else wrote in to the mailing list and said i know how you can solve that problem just get an English dictionary and get a German dictionary [laughter] look how many words are in each [laugh] and you will know which language has more words er complete er i mean i i should have replied to that but it just i was amazed because it just seemed such a silly idea [laughter] because they could have taken a a little dictionary and a big dictionary and er er and anyway the the one of the main problems is that er which dictionary would you would you choose to to resolve that question er the Oxford English Dictionary up there er contains English words that have been in use since eleven-hundred and it's just under half-a- million half-a-million words in the largest English dictionary the Oxford English Dictionary er another very big one American one Webster's Third internation-, New International that collects words f-, er since seventeen- fifty-five and that's got four-hundred-and-fifty-thousand words but there are far far more than half-a-million words in English anyone ever heard any figure quoted for how many words there are in English it it it's frequently said four-million but er that can't be true really because there are six-million registered chemical compounds suppose that's true for every language all you know there'll be if there are six-million registered chemical compounds in English there will be for every language for everyone speaking here er and there are about two-hundred-thousand medical terms so you couldn't possibly fit all of those in a single dictionary could you and there's another point as well new words are coming into the language every day so you'd have to keep changing the dictionary every day you'd have to keep adding to it every day er so there must be someone who dec-, makes decisions about what goes in what goes out nf1271: right so what i'm going to be talking about is er new words and old words new words coming into the language old words dying out er course the number of i can't use er have to shout because er i'm waving the microphone can you hear me ss: yes ss: no nf1271: er the number of people speaking English has increased enormously in a hu-, last hundred years there were apparently a hundred-and-forty-million native speakers of English at the beginning of last century and four-hundred- million native speakers at the end of last century i don't know how that happened er and there were also a hun-, an extra hundred-million who spoke English as a second language er there's such a thing as the Oxford World Reading Programme that's used for Oxford English dictionaries and they have sixty readers around the world whose job it is to pick up instances of new words and phrases every time they see them and they claim that there's an average of eighteen-thousand examples of new words and turns of phrase each month terrific amounts er each year about nine-hundred of these are considered important enough to put in the Oxford English Dictionary neologisms are new words er and this century there've been about ninety-thousand new words recorded so in the last a hundred years ninety- thousand new words have been recorded for English that's apparently is about twenty-five per cent there's been an increase of twenty-five per cent in the vocabulary of eng-, of English since nineteen-hundred it's not very good news for any of us is it [laughter] if we're if we're learning English [laughter] it's a rather frightening thought that er even if you just learn the new words there'd be ninety extra to learn er if you just look at any newspaper you'll see that this is true in fact you'll if you if you look at any newspaper any day of the week you will find words that aren't yet in a dictionary perhaps they'll never get into a dictionary i just tested this out yesterday i i had a look at Time magazine for this week and er the Independent and i i've got some some examples here er i i read the past year's tech-led decline tech T-E-C-H- hyphen- L-E-D tech-led decline now i'm prepared to bet that tech-led isn't in any dictionary er and another one weblogs or blogs the daily personal diaries that many write on their web pages so a a diary on on your web page is c-, is now called a blog [laugh] whether that will ever make its way into a dictionary i don't know but it's maybe this is the first time it's ever appeared in print the word in Time magazine as talking and again i have from the Independent like-for-like sales were up seven per cent like-for-like with hyphens like hyphen for hyphen like new words er and er a lone package rated above junk status junk status these these are words that are not officially recognized in any dictionary yet but they're appearing all the time in every time you open a newspaper in conversation new words occurring all the time why er why do we keep on adding new words to English when we've got four-million or ten-million or however many already it it would im-, seems a bit odd doesn't it that the language should be growing to such an extent but in fact we've got to add new words because new things are happening all the time nf1271: this er this table shows how er new different types of new words came into the language in the last a hundred years so er the first column is the most frequent the the the greatest area of lexical growth and this one is the smallest area of lexical growth but they're all areas in which new words were came into the language so in the early nineteen-hundreds there weren't any words for cars things connected with cars so there was a massive rise in the number of words in English that were connected with cars and also aeroplanes of course because they were er they hadn't been in existence before you'll notice that in at this time don't know if anyone's a French speaker here French speakers well a lot of English words are about aeroplanes are of French origin and that's because the French were very very good at er aviation and er the science of developing aeroplanes and so we borrowed our words for aviation from the French er nineteen-twenties lots of er dance music and er the the what were they called the er roaring twenties they were known as when everyone went out and had a lot of fun between the wars nineteen-thirties and forties war [laugh] lots of words connected with war came in here obviously the thirties and forties also for the first time nuclear power and for the very first time computers and space new words for computers and space travel started coming into the language er can you guess looking at this can you guess what about the sixties and the seventies what kind of words were coming into the language in the sixties and the seventies sf1274: computers sm1275: computers nf1271: computers er yes absolutely right computers was the commonest any anything else sf1276: youth nf1271: mm sf1277: hippies nf1271: yes that kind of thing youth er music we think of the sixties as being particularly a time of hippies and [cough] pop music and things sm1278: nf1271: mm sm1278: drugs nf1271: drugs yeah actually [laughter] yeah you're you're you're absolutely right here we got er drugs started coming in then er don't know actually drugs in the end computers were the main growth er sixties were youth culture and music and the first for the first time we've got this which well i'll talk about in a few minutes the idea that you have to have special words for special groups of people so as not to offend them er and then the eighties eighties are characterized in Britain at least by a lot of concern with money [laughter] people were very interested in money in the eighties and making a lot of it er and also the environment for the first time we started words like er the greenhouse effect actually had had existed since about the nineteen-thirties but people hadn't n-, ordinary people who were not scientists they had never heard these terms until the eighties and then they became popular and t-, in the nineteen-nineties can you think of one area where there's been a huge growth in the nineteen-nineties sf1279: Internet sm1280: nf1271: absolutely yes er sm1280: nf1271: it's actually third but to us it seems to be a very very important area of growth nf1271: we need new words to to talk about new things that didn't exist before cars and planes and the Internet er we also need new words as a quicker and more convenient way of saying something we live in a world where er everything seems to be moving faster and faster and there are er things that we can do to make our speech more succinct er one one thing that we've been doing a lot in the twentieth or we did in the twentieth century was to add lie-, er wise have you come across this where you say instead of with regard to or as far as something is concerned you make it the the sentence much shorter by saying er er oh i'm all prepared lessonwise or er i know what to do exam wise it's it's informal it's not considered correct English but it's much quicker than saying as far as exams are concerned er another similar one is like any German speakers no German speakers it's supposed to be the influence of the German language on American English because of a lot of German speakers in America and in germ-, in the German language has got sm1280: nf1271: there is a German speaker [laughter] er [laughter] good are you a German speaker [laughter] like to comment on that sm1280: nf1271: is do you concur yes what i'm saying is correct [laughter] you can ask him for more details afterwards er another another reason we new we need new words is because the old words have become offensive this happens all the time you have a word it seems a bit rude so you have another one and then that seems a bit rude so you have another one a a typical er example of this is the word for toilet or lavatory we keep changing it all the time because each time we think of a new word then everyone's offended by that as well so so in America they've got to this ridiculous situation what do they call it in America ss: restroom [laughter] nf1271: restroom we think that seems a bit silly because it's nothing to do [laughter] with any rest at all but er [laugh] er but they're trying very hard i'm sure they'll have to think of another term soon because people will be embarrassed to say res-, restroom and er er going we'll talk about political correctness again in a moment but er at one time people could be described as fat but that is considered offensive now so peop-, you use words like er well chunky [laughter] and er have you heard of er it's a bit of a joke but things like horizontally challenged [laughter] or circumferentially challenged [laughter] er ways to get round saying that somebody is fat er and we also use new add new words to create little groups of people and reinforce their membership so they feel they belong have have any of you heard of Cockney rhyming slang have you come across that it's a slang it's slang that's used have you heard Cockney you know the word Cockney it means people living in London well in a cert-, in a right in the centre of London and there's a kind of slang that is used by Londoners where instead of saying the word they say another word with which rhymes with it so a telephone is a dog and bone er there's lots and lots of examples of this er and some of them are used by lots of people all around er Britain and some of them really are only used in London but the original idea apparently was to keep outsiders out apparently or-, it originated with thieves who wanted to talk about all their plans for stealing things without other people understanding what they were saying [laughter] er but also teenagers have slang words don't they teenage slang words like sad and wicked don't know if you come across words like that er nf1271: do you know do you know have you come across er the word sad in slang meaning no er it used we all know what the pr-, the dictionary meaning is er which is not this not this these are this keeps changing er for this one mournful not not happy basically yeah but i-, it's used a great deal now in by teenagers at least to mean to refer to someone who's a social failure so or someth-, somebody who's not er a great social success basically so he's really sad just er just stays at home and listens to classical music or something [laughter] er and that that meaning has evolved amongst teenagers er because it makes them feel that they all understand each other and they're all part of the same group and other people are excluded from that group so you'll notice from this that er when we say new words we are not usually talking about completely new words we're talking about new meanings for old words nf1271: so when we talk about new words how do we form them we can put words like sad to a new to a new use so it used to mean unhappy now it means not very socially er well integrated it's very difficult to measure this isn't it because how can you tell when a word is changing its meaning they change perhaps their meanings just slightly is it a new word or is it just a slightly different interpretation of an old word so that's the most difficult one to measure the most common way of creating new words in English is to combine existing words er or word parts right this they say that three-quarters of all the new vocabulary in English certainly a big majority all the new words in English are constructed in this way they're combinations so some of the examples that i gave out er a few minutes ago like like-for-like and tech-led right are combinations of word part the World Wide Web er you can there's also such a thing as a blend where you take er you take parts of words and concertina them together so that they're not just two bits of like tech- led or World Wide Web but they're squashed together so that you can't really work out what they what the parts were a famous example of this that's often used is motel what's motel nf1271: it's a very it's a very very common way of creating new words nowadays motel is ss: motor hotel nf1271: motor hotel er i'll try some more on you er this one was very common a few years back but it doesn't seem to be used so much now do you know what it is sf1281: channel tunnel nf1271: yes the channel tunnel ss: oh nf1271: [laughter] these ones are very common at the moment you'll he-, you'll you'll certainly come across these do you know this one it's a new idea it's a sort of combination of information and entertainment a lot of a lot of the stuff on the Internet is what you call infotainment you learn a bit but you're enjoying yourself at the same time a new concept and er how about this one again a new idea really you know that one it's a mixture between a documentary and a soap opera [laughter] er i don't know if this relates in some ways to what namex's talking about on his talk er om1282: no nf1271: [laughter] no not at all er the the idea that you can is a documentary is supposed to be telling a true account of er you know some information and a soap opera is a dramatization but sometimes nowadays on television you can't really tell you know it's a sort of mixture between the two because they're slightly setting up situations so that they're more entertaining and they're more emotional than maybe everyday life would be er any anyone know any more blends it's a very very common way of forming words in English at the moment a famous one that dates to the nineteenth century is brunch you all know brunch brunch breakfast and lunch but i'm sure if you look out you'll see you'll see plenty more nf1271: so that's a that's a a method of combining er another way of forming new words is to shorten them you can knock off the end so we we talk about porn rather than pornography er these days you can do something called in-, an initialism and that is when you take the letters er and pronounce the initial letters of each of the word er each of the words separately er common examples today you'll th-, come across a lot are B-S- E yeah you've all heard of B-S-E sf1283: nf1271: it's mad cow disease you've all heard of mad cow disease ss: oh nf1271: yeah it's it's i i forgot it's bovine spongiform encephalitis is the correct full name but we call it B-S-E er one that's very topical F-M-D do you know what F-M-D is you'll see it in the newspapers foot and mouth disease that's right er i'm never sure i'm never sure whether how to pronounce this one have you come across this ss: nf1271: yes how do you pronounce it though [laughter] do you say it's A F-A-Qs sm1284: i think you do nf1271: you say it's A F-O-A-Qs yeah frequently asked questions we say F-A have you come across F-A-Qs no [laugh] er you you probably will during the next year you'll probably come across F-A-Qs er frequently asked questions a list of questions and answers that people often ask sa-, to save people the trouble of as-, answering questions over and over again they put them the put the er er answers to the frequently asked questions down all at once er it's an initialism the other way to do it would be to make it into an acronym and call it a FAQ i don't know if anyone's done that yet in English we have initialisms like F-A-Q F-M-D B-S-E and we have acronyms like er AIDS yeah and NATO yeah i don't really know why some words in English are pronounced as initialisms and some are pronounced as acronyms perhaps it's just how easy it is to pronounce the word i know in some languages they always pronounce the new words as acronyms they don't pronounce them as initialisms am i right some languages tend to use more acronyms but English uses quite a lot of initialisms so sometimes if you're thinking of a translation for a word er in your language you'll find that in English you have to pronounce each letter individually have you come across that has anyone come across that not sure think think about it er the interesting this is that there were virtually no acronyms a hundred years ago there w-, there weren't any if you look at the language as it was written in nineteen-hundred there were no acronyms and the reason for this of course is all the medical developments and all the organizations and entities that have grown up in the last a hundred years and with such long names that people couldn't keep on saying the long name and therefore they had to find a way of shortening it and i expect that's true in everyone's languages here everyone's everyone's had the same experience nf1271: another way of forming new words is to borrow them from other languages and we do that quite a lot about five per cent of all the new words in English that have come into English this century are borrowed from other languages er is there any particular area where you think that English borrows a lot sm1285: food nf1271: food yes that's right food's the main one isn't it every time you go to a menu er look at a menu in a restaurant in Britain all the words are foreign [laughter] i wonder why that is [laughter] er we've especially in the last hundred years we've er discovered that other countries have better food than we have [laughter] er [laughter] and we've borrowed tried to borrow the food we've certainly borrowed the words i don't know how successfully we've managed to borrow the food but we've we've we got the words all right er other areas er sm1286: animals nf1271: animals yes i suppose that's so but i don't know have there been many new new animals discovered recently [laughter] in the last hundred years or so [laughter] maybe [laughter] sm1286: for example orang-utan nf1271: yes orang-utan is er from sm1286: from Indonesia nf1271: from Indonesia yes yeah so that's certainly i don't know when orang- utan was borrowed into English but that's certainly certainly in the last hundred years i'd say yeah yeah er political things connected with politics borrowed from other languages in the Cold War s-, immediately after the Cold War a lot of Russian words like glasnost and so on and nowadays i suppose things like er er fatwa have been borrowed into English and the last one is the last way and really a very uncommon way of forming new words in English is to c- , coin them out of nothing to make them out of nothing that's really pretty rare in English i don't know about in other er languages but we that's a last resort in English we only do it if we really can't think of a way of using bits of old words or borrowing somebody else's words er one very famous example is this cover it up like that then you won't be able does anyone know what that word means ss: nf1271: you search the Internet a search of the Internet oh well maybe it's got another meaning as well sm1287: nf1271: it it is a mathematical term yeah it's a mathematical term that's what it means i personally have never had cause to use it but er if you're a mathematician you may do a-, a-, apparently the story of this word is that a a famous mathematician can't remember his name er im-, wanted a term to describe this number there isn't a word in English he asked his grandson and his grandson only happened to be about a year old at the time [laughter] and his grandson said googol [laughter] and so that was the word that he used that's the story i understand is anyone here a Tamil speaker does anyone speak Tamil no because in some languages some languages are much richer in number words than English is and i understand in some Indian languages they've got many more words for numbers than we have in English but er and i don't know what they call googol but that's the English word er another one was is quark do you you know quark sm1288: no nf1271: it's er it's a a group of subatomic particles is what it means and it was originally used as a nonsense word in the novels of do you know the novelist James Joyce an Irish novelist James Joyce er and he invented this word it didn't mean anything but it was taken by er physicists just they've just used it to for their science nf1271: okay so lots and lots of new words coming in to the language all the time but how many of them will actually last this is the problem for people making dictionaries even if they did record all the new words then they'd discover that a great many of them didn't remain in the language anyway they came they lasted a a year maybe less than that then they disappeared again and so would hardly be worth recording them in a dictionary er so in this period i'm afraid i haven't got any more recent figures there were three-thousand-five- hundred-and-sixty-five new words recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary fifty-eight per cent of them had fallen out of use again by nineteen-ninety-three er so why what happens why do these words fall out of use er some of them because they refer to things that never happened there was at one time for example proposed a a union between Scandinavia and the U-K and it was called Uniscan but it never happened so we never talk about it any more er more commonly perhaps you get new a a new thing a new idea or something arising and people in different parts of the English speaking world think of different names for it so you've got several names for the same thing and they're in competition and eventually one word becomes the common word for that thing can you guess what these are for instance these are words that were originally used for yeah can anyone guess either of them sm1289: breathalyser nf1271: yeah that's right yes intoximeter was another name for a breathalyser you know [blow] when you have to blow if you're driving and you've had something to drink and the police stop you and ask you to blow so they can tell how much alcohol you've drunk nowadays it's called a breathalyser when it was first invented some people called it an intoximeter some people called it a breathalyser breathalyser won what about this one any ideas it's genetic engineering don't know why genetic engineering won and algeny lost but er i i had a colleague who's now retired worked here at this university er with a group of biologists who were working on some trying to identify some er microscopic organisms some bacteria and they were working with a group in California and each time they discovered a new bacteria the group in Britain gave a name to the new bacteria and the group in California gave a name to the bacteria so there were two different names for the same bacteria and the w-, the group at namex called their bacteria with long Greek and Latin names and the group in California called their bacteria with names like Big Black Bug [laughter] and the end of the story is that the two groups met up and all the biologists who were working on the project in namex moved to California [laughter] so [laugh] that's what happens [laughter] [laugh] er and just a last point er this goes back to this notion of political correctness there've been a lot of changes er in the way that we call people as a result of not wishing to offend minority groups what do you call the lady who serves you on the aeroplane ss: nf1271: hostess stewardess flight attendant which is more politically correct ss: nf1271: yeah er it started off [laughter] as sky girls then we've got air stewardess air hostess but nowadays that's not considered politically correct [laughter] so er it's flight attendant is the correct name and just to finish off here's some more politically correct words er you don't have a chairman any longer what is it now we don't talk about chairperson er i got told off by the the head of the school where my daughter went because i called her a headmistress she told me off it's not that now is it it's headteacher you're not supposed to call a w-, a woman head a headmistress er blind people or people who have difficulty seeing don't call them blind any more that's too politically incorrect [laughter] visually challenged [laughter] people who are short this is a bit of a joke really but y-, short people now don't call them short they're vertically [laughter] challenged and there have been some words that are suggested but i don't know whether they will ever catch on have you heard of this i don't know if these they're not in common use see if they catch on maybe they'll be the new words of the future very clumsy aren't they [laugh] okay thanks nf1271: i think everybody ought to have one of those myself have a look at them and decide which one you like best this one looks the nicest Longman the Longman looks the nicest needs if i mean they're all good the Longman's perhaps got the most er attractive layout the ca-, er the Cambridge International Dictionary of English's got smaller print but it it er does contain a lot of information but it's perhaps not so attractive to look at er you can some of these have got versions online as well the Cambridge is a very useful one for online free online er you go to the Cambridge Dictionary er the Cambridge Dictionary website you can a-, have access to this dictionary and the equivalent American dictionary online for free and i think at the moment at the Longman web if you i think at the Longman web page at the moment you can access the Longman dictionary online as well but really you should be thinking in terms of also as a very advanced learners as you are where did i put it er you should be thinking in terms of getting er a native speaker dictionary as well because the difference between the learner dictionaries and the er native speaker dictionaries is the learners' dictionaries give lots of good information about the grammar pronunciation and the use of words they tell you i mean sometimes i use a learner's dictionary er sometimes really for my own purposes when i'm writing i don't want to use a native speaker dictionary because i want to know what the collocation i-, you know i want to know can you say for example to er [laugh] i'm trying to think of an example to er to arouse interest you know i don't i'm i'm not sure i can give you do you say arouse interest and i'd look in one of these dictionaries rather than a native speaker dictionary because the native speaker dictionaries don't give many examples of how you use they presume that you know all about the language except for the particular word that you're looking up whereas these ones give you lots of examples and they they show you the kind of context in which it would be suitable to use the word so you need this but of course because they provide all that information about context and pragmatics that means you know whether it's polite or whether it's er only used in technical texts and they give lots of information like that so there isn't enough room left to put in a lot of words so typically these dictionaries will have about fifty-thousand words whereas the New Oxford Dictionary of English and i've got it on C-D-ROM here is three-hundred-and-fifty-thousand words so you've got quantity and quality but not quality quality in in the sense of more information about each word so really you need both er i was going to buy the New Oxford Dictionary of English because it's very good but er it costs about thirty pounds and so i bought the C-D instead and that cost twenty pou-, nineteen-pounds-ninety-nine er these cost about what what about fifte-, fifteen pounds something like that om1282: yeah another question sf1290: English is considered to be one to be the world's most richest and consummate language but nf1271: can't see who's speaking can you put your hand up [laughter] right okay [laughter] sf1290: English is considered to be one er to be the world's most famous richest and consummate language and the borrowing of word from the different languages in perspective of the food names and animals' name don't you think this would affect the singularity uniqueness and richness of the English language nf1271: no it's the opposite really it is the opposite isn't it i mean it wouldn't have grown if it's very flexible er most European countries have got some kind of academy which tries to control the language and tells people correct and incorrect use i think almost all European countries apart from Britain has some sort of er established group of people who say this is not a French word for example and in France this is particularly active in France there are actually laws saying you can't put English words on your shopfronts you can't use this English word in French because it's not a French word you have to use a French equivalent but Britain has never had that br-, er when the other academies were being developed in the eighteenth century er they decided not to have one in Britain and they just let it grow and and that's one of the reasons why there's so many words of course i don't think no i think i thi-, well i think it's great don't you [laughter] it's great to to add new words er it would be very silly to try and translate er Indian restaurant curry menu into English i think [laughter] so no i d-, haven't got any objections at all i don't think i think it's in the spirit of the English language that it's very flexible always changing the grammar is always changing too nf1271: initialism is when you say the each letter in turn so er B-S-E er F-M-D foot and mouth disease and an acronym is where you pronounce it as if it was a word so if you said bse [laugh] instead of B-S-E it would be an acronym that's obviously the reason why we don't do it because you can't say it but NATO is an acronym AIDS is an acronym yeah you see the difference in some languages they turn all their initialisms into acronyms they don't they don't use initialisms very much but in English we have a mixture of the two depending on whether we can pronounce it or not foot the FTSE index is a is an acronym although you wouldn't think you'd be able to pronounce it as they changed they've changed its er sm1291: it will be one of the common classes in the presessional we consult a little about er the use of hes and hers nf1271: ah yes sm1291: and when when you nf1271: yes sm1291: when when you are actually talking in general terms and er there is high concern about which is the the correct way what's your opinion about nf1271: well there's a there's a n-, a desperate need for a word that's not he and not she and not his we've got two words a word that's not he and she and a word that's not his and her a neutral pronoun but although the lexical words in English are growing all the time and we can change them and add to them there are there's a subclass of words in English which are called grammatical words and they can't change they're those very short words pronouns prep-, prepositions articles er that's about it really er and ix-, auxiliary verbs verbs like the verb to be you can't change them the last change we had in the pronoun system in English was in Anglo-Saxon times when we borrowed two pronouns from Scandinavian languages and that was they and them that was the last time that's about er over a thousand years ago and we still haven't got used to it because af-, after a thousand years we still haven't adjusted because you'll hear English people say er instead of them what do they say in spee-, in fast speech have you noticed this almost all of us we don't actually say them in fast speech we say 'em give 'em to me so after a thousand years we still haven't adjusted to that borrowing [laugh] and so er in America particularly i mean there are web sites devoted to suggestions for change to a neutral pronoun but they won't catch on we just can't you know we can borrow any number of lexical words but we don't seem to be able to borrow or to invent any new grammatical words in English it's it's awful because we really need them they just don't catch on you know keep suggesting them nobody nobody will agree no one took takes it up because it's part of the grammatical system of the language and the grammar the basic grammatical system of the language can't change om1282: okay thanks very much namex