Firstly, there was an interview on Radio 5 Live with two people in Corby in connection with the story about birth defects and the link with toxic waste. During the course of the interview both interviewees either used a word incorrectly or made up a word. In both cases, on first hearing, it was almost possible to believe that the words were correct, but something jarred and the errors made me laugh and despair at the same time. In the first instance, the interviewee said that "the council was clearly negligible" in their dealings with the toxic waste. In the second instance, a few seconds later a second interviewee said that "the ruling showed that there had clearly been neglection on the part of the council...". I assume that the first interviewee meant to say negligent and the second neglect, but the two mistakes started me thinking about the English language, how difficult it is to use correctly, how easy it is to create plausible alternatives and how flexible we are both in using and interpreting the language. After all, in both instances I understood what the speaker intended (I think!).
Which brings me to the second item. The big technology story of the day was the announcement of the "co-operation" agreed between two of the major players in technology and household names (and words) to boot - Yahoo and Microsoft (or more specifically Bing). The story focuses on the merger of these two famous names who are seeking to take on the dominant force in the market, Google. It is no co-incidence that the name Google has now become the Sellotape of its day (or Scotch if you are American or French!), making the crucial leap from proper noun to verb in daily use.
John Connell has already blogged about the Scottish alternative meaning to Microsoft's choice of search engine brand name which I'm quite sure the brand marketeers back in Seattle never considered. But will we really talk about "binging" someone, have we ever talked about "yahooing" something and will the Yahoo/Bing merger bring about a new term for the English language that we will adopt into common parlance? (Ying? Boo??) The power of language is such that unless this new partnership can coin a term that can compete with that of Google, almost regardless of the quality of the search engine, it will probably have failed before it has even begun. We tweet, we google, I dare say we even possibly facebook (??), but are we likely to bing? (Personally I think Boing would have been a much better name, but then what do I know?).
All I can say is let the people decide and let the language come to the fore. Whatever name is used, we'll probably change it anyway. As we say round these parts, plus ca change... Who'd be an English teacher?
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