Erin McKean: Go ahead, make up new words!
In this fun, short talk from TEDYouth, lexicographer Erin McKean encourages — nay, cheerleads — her audience to create new words when the existing ones ...
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I'm a lexicographer. I make dictionaries. And my job as a lexicographer is to try to put all the words possible into the dictionary. My job is not to decide what a word is; that is your job. Everybody who speaks English decides together what's a word and what's not a word. Every language is just a group of people who agree to understand each other. Now, sometimes when people are trying to decide whether a word is good or bad, they don't really have a good reason. So they say something like, "Because grammar!" (Laughter) I don't actually really care about grammar too much -- don't tell anybody. But the word "grammar," actually, there are two kinds of grammar. There's the kind of grammar that lives inside your brain, and if you're a...
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I'm a lexicographer. I make dictionaries. And my job as a lexicographer is to try to put all the words possible into the dictionary. My job is not to decide what a word is; that is your job. Everybody who speaks English decides together what's a word and what's not a word. Every language is just a group of people who agree to understand each other. Now, sometimes when people are trying to decide whether a word is good or bad, they don't really have a good reason. So they say something like, "Because grammar!" (Laughter) I don't actually really care about grammar too much -- don't tell anybody. But the word "grammar," actually, there are two kinds of grammar. There's the kind of grammar that lives inside your brain, and if you're a...
