Gizmodo Australia » language

“Unfriend” Declared Word Of The Year

Brian Lam — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:36:29 +0000

The New Oxford American Dictionary declared “Unfriend” the word of the year. It beat out hashtag, netbook and sexting, among other nominated words.

Oxford defines the verb as: “To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.” I think they should include offline usage, too, like when you stop calling people back entirely or leave people at rest stops on road trips. What, you guys don’t do that? [CNN]

Is “Nerdic” Really the Fastest Growing Language?

Gizmodo US Edition — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:30:00 +0000

According to Pixmania.com’s research, the speedy growth of consumer electronics and associated buzzwords and acronyms has created the “fastest growing language” in Europe. The study says it’s more widely spoken than any single European language and is used by all ages. More words get added to it each year than are added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Hmmmm. What exactly is this “nerdic”? Read on for what the study suggests are the top ten words/phrases… and why we think it’s all rubbish.

Pixmania’s top ten: WiMax, Rickroll, UGC, mashup, RFID, Android, HDMI, fuel-cell, HSDPA and DVB-H.

There’s also a “bottom ten” list too, which includes dial-up, KB and, of course, HD DVD.

And what’s this about it being a language? Of course global adoption of a technology adds certain phrases to all languages— I mean, just a small bunch of decades ago few people would’ve understood the words “cellphone” or “hard drive” or “SCART.” But does that really make it a language? No, it’s not even a dialect. Does it even help non-nerds understand the tech they’re buying, no matter what country they’re buying it in? Remember the consumer frenzy that stirred up around digital cameras and the megapixel race? And the multitude of terms about HD TV: all that 1080i, 720p (really 768p) nonsense?

Sorry, Pixmania, but you lose. [Pixmania via Pocket Lint]

Computer Learns Baby Talk, Pacifies Programmers

jenneth — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:14:50 +0000

Stanford researchers have developed a program that can, at a most basic level, learn language. In studying whether the brain is hard-wired with preset sounds or if it acquires the basics of speech dynamically, a computer program was designed to learn speech. After listening to hours of Japanese and English mother-to-baby talk, the computer was able to learn the basic vowel sounds just as a baby. The computer performed so well that its accuracy was measured between 80-90%, depending on the software architecture (and whether it was “nappie time”).Language acquisition has long been seen as a specialty of the brain—a strength of the species, if you will. To re-create one of our most distinct qualities in a lab setting is either impressive for computers or pitiful for humans. Then again, be comforted knowing that when computers do speak, they’ll sound just like Arnold Schwarzenegger, anyway. [arstechnica]