Anne Curzan: What makes a word "real"?

moobs = man + boobs :D

I like her speech. Is she a transgender though?

Yes it is

I love the lectures that professor Curzan has recorded with The Great Courses Plus. She is the best.

If I were evaluating a pile of resumes and I came across "invite" used as a noun, I would think "Beverly Hillbillies" and immediately toss that resume into the reject pile. Dictionaries need to warn you of the risk of using such words.

My peeves are not about language, but about pronunciation. I am disturbed the way dialects all rush away from each other so that people from different parts of the world cannot use English to communicate. There is so much muddying and slurring and dropped sounds. English will get harder and harder to understand. At some point we will have to define standard pronunciation so everyone can intercommunicate, and use the local dialect for talking to neighbours. Young females drive me crazy by emphasising and elongating random syllables and turning every sentence into a question with a rising tone.

My pet hate: "based off of". As in The Shining was based off of a book by Stephen King. What's wrong with "based on"?

What makes something real is that it stands to the light of reasoning. They are both why religion still strives and why nations that do not give to question perish. It is what Joseph Stalin so cynically knew that power no matter how big and behemoth as it makes itself to be gently whilst away to the questions of one man just as easily as David slated, Gollieth. Before the world wide economic break of 2008 we saw only lift as currency multiplied to the infinate, and then again just as easily it came to tumble down as dominos of epic world shatter, to one man's question. And just as those walls of Titan and financial might be built up to towering heights of Babel and sky ceilings just as quickly it will fall, to the question of time for wharever will exist, will do so only if it bends to the rythem and sways of nature and to all that was before.

The Webster dictionary once made a mistake that lead to the neologism "dord". Oxford made up a false word "equivalescence" for copyright. So even a dictionary can lie in some places.

multi-slacking made my day.
Such an amazing talk.

My English teacher made me watch this lmaoooo

Think for a minute. What if the words we use are just made up and we learned to make them our reality. Who actually came up with all the words we use to form sentences? How do we know the words we say and write and think are even real? What if they don't even exist but we're too stubborn to find out the truth?

In and of itself, there is no such thing as correct English or a correct word. Language is most often a dynamic thing which changes according to the times. But there are forms of language which are considered to be 'standards' by the people who set them, self appointed or decided arbiters. By how powerful these people's efforts are, those standards permeate into society at large. The printing press in fact had a lot to do with standardization of the English language. Then you had the efforts of linguists who argued their models of certain standards of language based on certain forms of logic, while others leaned on more subjective grounds. 

What is for sure is this: Language (like other things in life) is used unwittingly as tool for stratifying people on the social totem pole. People judge you based on the words, grammar or accents that you use. Using these standardized forms of language can give cachet to your political, professional and social goals. And likewise, using what might be considered to be slang or 'improper' language might make people think less of you. 

It is rather unintelligent, all this snap judgement. But our neurological proclivity is to instantly judge people based on the way they look, dress, speak, smell, etc. So it is our choice whether or not to pander to the whims of society

Simply, it was a very nice talk and the examples provided were brilliantly chosen. Good job  :)

Funny, The English Language used to be a Slang Language as well as the German Language, and Shakespeare Invented ALOT of Words that We use Today, so the Internet is actually Improving Our Languages :)

Very good Ted talk! I would add that if the majority of dictionary editors and usage panelists are white, well-educated, and well-off, those identity markers can be pretty ~impactful~ upon the culture's idea of "right" and "wrong" language. Black children and bilingual Latino children are often told the language they and their communities speak is simply wrong. I like what she has to say about English being a living language, and that there's no better authority than the speakers.

I enjoyed this talk! I found it interesting, funny, and insightful!

Funny to watch this a few days after YOLO enters the dictionary. Great talk!

"Less quick"? Should one be concerned with purposeful Orwellian misspeak as a totalitarian tool?

That speech was really Impactful 

I liked this speech and I found it funny and informative.