Ice Chip #30

The English Language WordClock:  1,001,366.

English passed the 1,000,000 threshold on June 10, 2009 at 10:22 am GMT

According to the Global Language Monitor there are over one million words to choose from in the English Language!!!  That gives you so many opportunities to use words to express and articulate your thoughts.  If you click the link you will have the opportunity to listen to an interview where Matt Frei reports on English’s unique linguistic evolution and then speaks to Global Language Monitor’s, Paul Payack who  helped find this millionth English word.

I was curious to see where the “(k)notty words” would show up in a study of the most common words in the English Language.  According to a study done in conjunction with the Oxford English Dictionary, they developed a list of the top 100 words or “lemmas”.  A lemma is where one word is the “headword” for several others that are in the same family of words.   For instance the entry “be” contains within it the occurrences of “is”, “was”, “be” and “are”.  In English, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, with run as the lemma.  A lexeme refers to the set of all the forms that have the same meaning.  

Note also that these top 100 lemmas listed below account for 50% of all the words in the Oxford English Corpus.  This information comes from the Wikipedia entry for most common words.

Rank Word
1 the
2 be
3 to
4 of
5 and
6 a
7 in
8 that
9 have
10 I
Rank Word
11 it
12 for
13 not
14 on
15 with
16 he
17 as
18 you
19 do
20 at
Rank Word
21 this
22 but
23 his
24 by
25 from
26 they
27 we
28 say
29 her
30 she
Rank Word
31 or
32 an
33 will
34 my
35 one
36 all
37 would
38 there
39 their
40 what
Rank Word
41 so
42 up
43 out
44 if
45 about
46 who
47 get
48 which
49 go
50 me
Rank Word
51 when
52 make
53 can
54 like
55 time
56 no
57 just
58 him
59 know
60 take
Rank Word
61 people
62 into
63 year
64 your
65 good
66 some
67 could
68 them
69 see
70 other
Rank Word
71 than
72 then
73 now
74 look
75 only
76 come
77 its
78 over
79 think
80 also
Rank Word
81 back
82 after
83 use
84 two
85 how
86 our
87 work
88 first
89 well
90 way
Rank Word
91 even
92 new
93 want
94 because
95 any
96 these
97 give
98 day
99 most
100 us



The main disempowering word:  “Not” is ahead of the Reframing Five:  Do, Can, Will, Would, Could. (Note that “But” is 3 from pushing “Do” further down the list. 

So what is the point of gathering this data and information? 

  • To give you the perspective that eradicating the “(k)notty words”  could have a major impact on creating change in the world. 
  • That empowering word choice could be  a significant part of your awareness for reframing your word choice.
  • To make the number of words you use, decrease…because you eradicated the “(k)notty words”.

Hope you enjoyed this bit of trivia, have a phenomenal week of articulation.  Remember to double check your emails before you hit send.  Use the reframing five.

Best regards,

Bob

P.S.  If you go to the Global Language Monitor link at the top of the Ice Chip, and watch the video that automatically loads (you will have to scroll down a bit to find the video), you will hear the 1,000,000th word as well as three others that were considered.  Be the first one to correctly identify all four of the words, and you will receive a signed copy of my book or Audio Book — your choice.  (I will take care of the postage).

September 15, 2009 | Filed Under Ice Chips, RTI 

comments

3 Responses to “Ice Chip #30”

  1. Susie Knobbe on September 15th, 2009

    I never knew there was such a thing as a Global Language Monitor tracking — that’s facinating! And, to think, when I logged on to hear about the 1,000,000th word as of June 1st, the count is now up to 1,001,366 — wow, we are adding words really fast.

    For those who didn’t get to the Global Language Monitor website to discover the 1,000,000th and next 3 words, they are: Web2.0, N00b, sexting & octomom. Weird that two of the four words have numerals in them — wonder what spell-check thinks about that?

    Thanks Bob for helping us learn something new everyday!

    Susie

  2. Hélder Falcao on September 15th, 2009

    Well BOB,

    If this stats were based on me, I would totally shift them:)

    In fact, since I have taken your coaching program my empowering alternatives are in the top of the list.
    I CAN, I Will, You could and many more are much better options!

    Thanks for sharing!!
    Hélder

  3. bob on September 17th, 2009

    Thank you Susie and Helder for your comments. It is amazing to think that “Not” and its related cousins— the other “(k)notty words” are ahead of the empowering words — Do, Will, Would, Can, Could as noted above.

    Think of the difference we all can make by eradicating and un-tying those
    “(k)nots.

    Keep up the great work!!

    Bob

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