It may be the 500,001st word, but it will certainly not be the last
The power of the English language to invent new words and seamlessly adopt them into everyday use is one of its magical strengths, and as a result English is universally recognised as having the richest vocabulary of any of the world’s 2700 languages.
Why raise it? Well the thought came to me last Friday following a Newstalk ZB chat about the economy between host Mike Hosking and the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Dr Alan Bollard.
(Not verbatim): Hosking says: What will be the ‘new normal’ then? The Governor: Well the ‘new normal’ is yet to be determined Mike.
The ‘new normal’! The two used it as though it’s an economic term that has been around forever and the mass audience that Hosking’s show attracts would know exactly what they are talking about.
As an economic term, ‘new normal’ has only really built up a head of steam since early 2009 following the financial meltdown.
Its strongest use to date is around spending patterns. In the United States, for example, the normal spending pattern between 1950 and 1980 was 62% of GDP. In the 80s it increased to 65%, the 90s to 67% and between 2001 and 2008 70%.
Most economists are confident that spending power is returning, but just where it will settle is a matter of conjecture – hence what will be the ‘new normal’.
It will be interesting to see if ‘new normal’ remains selective in definition, or whether it gathers momentum as a buzz word, and morphs into a general word describing change, and from there … where?
As an aside, it’s estimated that there are 500,000 English words (excluding the 500,000 technical and scientific words), or is that now 500,001! German has about 185,000 and French 100,000.
Tags: Dr Alan Bollard, English, GDP, Language, Mike Hosking, New normal, New word, Newstalk ZB, recession