"Web 2.0" crowned as millionth English word

A US-based language monitoring group crowned Web 2.0 as the one millionth word or phrase in the English language, although other linguists slammed it as nonsense and a stunt.

The Global Language Monitor, which uses a math formula to track the frequency of words and phrases in print and electronic media, said Web 2.0 appeared over 25 000 times in searches and was widely accepted, making it the legitimate, one millionth word.

It said Web 2.0 started out as a technical term meaning the next generation of World Wide Web products and services but had crossed into far wider circulation in the last six months.

Other linguists, however, denounced the list as pure publicity and unscientific, saying it was impossible to count English words in use or to agree on how many times a word must be used before it is officially accepted.

There are no set rules for such a count as there is no certified arbiter of what constitutes a legitimate English word and classifying the language is complicated by the number of compound words, verbs and obsolete terms.

“I think it’s pure fraud … It’s not bad science. It’s nonsense,” Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, told reporters.

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