Name: 【TED】Anne Curzan: What makes a word "real"? (Anne Curzan: What makes a word "real"?)
Uploaded: 2014-09-10T04:53:37.000Z
Duration: 17 min 14 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Gerund

I need to start by telling you a little bit

and they find out that I'm an English professor

they generally have one of two reactions.

One set of people look frightened. (Laughter)

I'm sure you'll hear every mistake I make."

"You are just the person I want to talk to."

And then they tell me about whatever it is

they think is going wrong with the English language.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a dinner party

that the Internet is degrading the English language.

"To defriend? I mean, is that even a real word?"

Who has the authority to make those kinds

of official decisions about words, anyway?

Those are the questions I want to talk about today.

I think most people, when they say a word isn't real,

That, of course, raises a host of other questions,

and the great thing about being a historian

When I teach the history of the English language,

two new slang words before I will begin class.

and they don't yet appear in a dictionary?

refer to a dictionary, either print or online?

Now, a second question. Again, a show of hands:

At some level, we know that there are human hands

but we're really not sure who those hands belong to.

tend not to be very critical about dictionaries,

and there is a large, unabridged dictionary

up on a pedestal in this place of honor and respect

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【TED】Anne Curzan: What makes a word "real"? (Anne Curzan: What makes a word "real"?)

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