Music, IT & Human Rights since 2005

Entertainment, NJN

Web 2.0 is the millionth word in the English language

How many do you use?

Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, June 10, 2009 with story from BBC.

Global Language Monitor (GLM) of Texas has declared that the web term “Web 2.0” is the millionth word in common used in the English language.

The firm makes its money by monitoring how often a company is mentioned on the Internet. GLM declares a new expression a word if it has been used 25,000 times on the web.

Listen to the debate on BBC Today.

Other experts disagree of course. They contend it is impossible to quantify the English language.

You can get by with about a few thousand words in English which is spoken by 1.5 billion of the earth’s population. A well spoken person uses between 20,000 and 50,000 words.

Creative Commons License
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License – NJN Network Inc.

2 Comments

  1. WTF

    Web = word
    2.0 = number

    Web 2.0 is not a word, its a term.

    Who makes this shit up?

  2. Mac

    Global Language Monitor (GLM) searches the internet for newly coined terms, and once a word or phrase has been used 25,000 times, it recognizes it.

    So FollowFriday must be recognized as a word. (For people not using twitter, FollowFriday is a recommendation given on people to follow in a specific niche).

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.