I have lately been suffering from an obsessive compulsive disorder ... to write! This writing is so impulsive, it seems almost as if there are all these words crowding my mind, waiting for their turn to appear on paper.
On being asked how I am able to write, and the origin of my words, the only answer I can offer is, "I don't know". Because I really don't. All I know is that if these words are put down with care, they surely communicate what I want to say, to the other person.
Where do these words really come from? Is it that words just 'are'? Or can we make our own words? If we can, surely it is a very creative act, an art in itself!
About the art:
In this fun, short talk from TEDYouth, lexicographer Erin McKean encourages — nay, cheerleads — her audience to create new words when the existing ones won’t quite do. She lists out 6 ways to make new words in English, from compounding to “verbing,” in order to make language better at expressing what we mean, and to create more ways for us to understand one another.
About the artist:
The co-founder of Reverb Technologies, and the maker of the online dictionary Wordnik, Erin McKean is reshaping how we interact with language itself.
Erin McKean's job as a lexicographer involves living in a constant state of research. She searches high and low -- from books to blogs, newspapers to cocktail parties -- for new words, new meanings for old words, or signs that old words have fallen out of use. In June of this year she involved us all in the search by launching Wordnik, an online dictionary that houses all the traditionally accepted words and definitions, but also asks users to contribute new words and new uses for old words. Wordnik pulls real-time examples of word usage from Twitter, image representations from Flickr along with many more non-traditional, and highly useful, features.
Source and credit for all information and video:
http://www.ted.com/talks/erin_mckean_go_ahead_make_up_new_words#
http://www.ted.com/speakers/erin_mckean
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