italki - Duang - When's a word a word? Yesterday I started a discussion about the words whodunit, whydunit an

Miriam

Duang - When's a word a word?

Yesterday I started a discussion about the words whodunit, whydunit and howdunit: <a href="https://www.italki.com/discussion/247779" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.italki.com/discussion/247779</a>;. Initially, I wanted to know if the terms are translatable to other languages and what other whydunits and howdunits the other users knew. But the discussion just revolved around several native English speakers stating that whydunit and howdunit weren't words and wouldn't exist. And it doesn't matter how many links and quotes I post of texts (from the 1940s to up until now) where native English speakers use these words, the others still insist that those aren't words and didn't exist.

So, my question is:

<ol><li>What is a "word"?</li><li>When does a word "exist"?</li></ol>

I won't repeat my comments from the other discussion but just post this very short definition of "word":

a single unit of language that has meaning and can be spoken or written <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/word" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/word</a>;

So, I'm stating, that when something can be spoken and/or written, conveys a meaning and is used by speakers of a certain language, it is an "existing word". Yes, it can be non-standard, nonsense or whatever, but it is still a word and it exists (because existing simply means the state of being).

An example of a word where people could say, it isn't a word is duang: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duang" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duang</a>;.

One could say, that the syllable "duang" doesn't exist in Chinese, that duang has no meaning, that there is no traditional character for it, but the fact is, that languages are evolving all the time. All words came into existence at one point. Some stay, some disappear but that doesn't mean they didn't exist.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article:

Despite its widespread appearance, the meaning of duang is unclear; "What's the meaning of duang" became the main topic on Weibo.[3] Although there seems to be no meaning at all, many people still continue to use it in their everyday conversations. The BBC has suggested that the word is an example of onomatopoeia, a word phonetically imitating a sound.[1] While Chan used it as a "cartoonish sound-effect", as Ad Age puts it,[5] some have used it in the same spirit while others have adopted it as an intensifier; for instance, something might be "duang cute" or you might be "very duang confused".[1] Based on the words spoken by Chan in the shampoo advertisement, duang has been defined as meaning "add special effects" (Chinese: 加特效; pinyin: jiā tèxiào) in some Chinese source. [...]

The word duang is not a permissible syllable in Standard Chinese. However, as both the onset d- and the rime -uang are both legal segments that occur in other syllables, the word is pronounceable in Mandarin.[6] Although the word was initially written without any indication of tone, it was later given a first tone reading as duāng.[6]

A character for duang does not exist in any Chinese dictionary and is not encoded in Unicode, but was created from the two characters used for Jackie Chan's Chinese stage name, Cheng Long (simplified Chinese: 成龙; traditional Chinese: 成龍; pinyin: Chéng Lóng, meaning "become a dragon"), stacked on top of each other.

So, duāng is pronouncable for native Chinese speakers, it is writtable as well, it does convey a meaning (and if it is just to give the sentence a certain effect) and it is used and understood by native Chinese speaker. Yes, it might be nonsense but it isn't complete gibberish. Why shouldn't it be called a word?

Jul 24, 2020 11:44 AM

Comments · 6

I think a word is just something that is used in a certain language and is understood by the person who is listening to or reading the word.

I think a word starts exists when it is used commonly and frequently. Some words may start existing because of their frequent use for example the word 'Freegan'. Other words may never have stopped existing, but may be used more commonly, and then therefore be more likely to be considered a word, for example the word 'Permaculture'.

<a href="https://learningenglishwithoxford.com/2020/01/09/5-new-words-2020/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://learningenglishwithoxford.com/2020/01/09/5-new-words-2020/</a>;

July 24, 2020

One corpus (2019) shows that the words "whydunit and howdunit" have been used in written texts beginning around (AmE) / round (BrE) 1950.

The frequency of use is as follows:

whodunit = 800

whydunit = 8

howdunit = 4

So, since the words "whydunit and howdunit" do show up in written texts, are they therefore to be considered as "words"?

I for one, would say yes.

The Chinese word "duang" reminded me of the informal North American English exclamation "dang".

dang /daNG/

euphemism for damn.

"Just get the dang car started!"

"Is dang a dang word or not?"

And the debate rages on... :)

July 27, 2020

@solecki

Awesome comment! You might be interested in this video (or know it already): Ted Talk by Anne Curzan: <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/anne_curzan_what_makes_a_word_real" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://www.ted.com/talks/anne_curzan_what_makes_a_word_real</a>;.

Some people might think, "nonce" isn't a word, because they haven't heard it, not even once. What happens if a nonce is used a second time? A twonce? Thinking about "nonce" brought me to hapax legomenon,a words that are only used once in a context, e.g. in a literary a work, and one example of a hapax legomenon is "nortelrye". It was used once by Chaucer, supposedly means "education" and only is used when people write either about Chaucer or about hapax legomena. And when looking up pages on hapax legomena and nortelrye, I found electronic music producer Adam Jay, who has an album called "Corpora" with tracks called "Hapax Legomena", "Nortelrye", "Terricrepo", "Lexic" and "Semasio". Techno for linguists.

July 27, 2020

I find the word 'word' interesting because of its recursive properties, namely that it's autological, i.e. it's itself a denotation of its own connotation, but it poses some mind-boggling epistemological challenges; even though it kind of bootstraps itself that way, it still somehow works and its meaning is, at least shallowly, quite clear to most people. Come to think of it, it's probably less ambiguous with these kinds of words with magical self-referential induced meaning, as compared to words that derive their meaning through detouring the rest of its language's vocabulary; in the end though, all connotations indirectly refers to themselves through some other connotations, it's just a matter of abstract distance I guess. (In this/that case, perhaps the words 'this' and 'that' would be the least ambiguous words?)

Anyhow, after reading this discussion I came to think of the oxymoron-like word 'nonce', also known as an 'occasionalism', and I wanted to share it since it by definition, by its own definition, solidifies your argument: it's a word which denotes *words* ("nonce words") that're supposed to be used only once. Answering the two questions in question is kind of hard since it relies on convention, and so the correct answers would vary depending on what knowledge exists at any given time, but it seems to me that as long as 'nonce' is part of a language's vocabulary, any sound or scripture that was created in order to *try* to convey some bit of information must then arguably be considered a word, neh? Now we'll only have to figure out when something is considered to be a part of a language's vocabulary, and "widely existing in dictionaries" seems like a pretty good criterion to start with.

I guess the correct answer to the problem of the ontology of the word would simply depend on the greatest amount of support, so let's find out the truth.

July 24, 2020