useless mental tidbits | Shakespeare vs. 1,000,000 words

As has been widely reported, the Global Language Monitor is predicting the one-millionth word to enter the English language will arrive on June 10, 2009. [GLM@wikipedia] Besides having predicted this event several times previously (starting with summer of 2006), and despite several objections by several linguists on the veracity of this organization's collection and qualitative methods, it's still sort of fun to keep track of.

And while it's obviously not easy to predict when the milestone word will arrive, there are also predictions (reported mostly as fact) that the new word will be... NOOB.
[MSN] [Kotaku] [joystiq] [telegraph.uk]

It's estimated that a new word is created every 98 minutes (again, according to the GLM), due to the proliferation of text-based online technology. There hasn't been this explosive of a word-creation period since Elizabethan times, when William Shakespeare was at work. His contribution to the English language is widely known (if equally widely debated). [wikipedia]

So here are a few items of interest over the last while regarding Shakespeare.

A new portrait of William Shakespeare, perhaps the only one painted during his lifetime, was discovered and unveiled. [time] [nyt]



And for the record, the words above the portrait, Principum amicitias! have started a debate of their own. With apologies to Dan brown (I'm sure), it's been dubbed The Shakespeare Code. [nyt] (The links in the NYT article are fascinating, including the before and after photos of the portrait to show a "hair restoration" operation that was made on the portrait some time after the portrait had been completed.)

And here's a link to a BBC video story about Shakespeare's first theatre. [BBC]

And finally... if you haven't already gotten your tickets, the 20th anniversary of the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival runs from May 28 through September 26, 2009 in Vanier Park in Kitsilano. [kits.ca] [bardonthebeach]

[UPDATE] After much speculation, the word declared to be the 1,000,000th of the English Language was... Web 2.0

Here's a good article about the whole issue. [nyt]