Friday, August 15, 2008
_____aholic?
I've never understood how you can just add "-aholic" to the end of a word to describe an addiction to that particular substance or activity. Obviously it comes from the term "alcoholic," but when talking about an addiction to alcohol, you're only adding "-ic" to the end. So what about words like "Shopoholic" or a new one I read earlier - "Twitterholic"? Why do we add half of a completely unrelated word (alcohol) to a term to describe the addiction? It just doesn't make sense to me. Can anyone shed a little light on the situation? I am starting to think that half of the English language is just made up of words mashed together in ways that don't necessarily make sense. We just do it because it sounds cool. It's probably another reason English is one of the hardest languages to learn.
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You make me sick! How do you do it? I get about half as many comments per week as I have put on you blog in the week since I discovered it. And that is not because I comment a lot on blogs. I typically don't but something about your posts make commenting almost compulsory.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, what is happening here is that the human brain is pre-programed to generalize. If someone points at something and says "blue", we assume that either everything that temperature, shape, size, color, texture, or speed is called blue. After several examples we learn which generalization is correct.
Through hundreds of examples, we learn that words with more than two syllables typically can be divided into meaningful parts and then put back together in different combinations. So the brain generalizes this idea and tries to apply it everywhere even in places that make no sense to people familiar with correct etymology of the word.
that's really funny. I really don't know how I do it! Maybe that's what matthew meant....
ReplyDeletehttp://cjones-somethingwitty.blogspot.com/2008/08/raining-cats-and-dogs.html
I've never even noticed
=D
that is a good theory though! ....people are crazy
PS - I'm sorry I make you sick...
ReplyDeletei think it's because of association. an alcoholic is someone who is addicted to alcohol. so when we hear the word (although not a real word) twitterholic, we associate it with alcohol and figure out what the person is trying to say.
ReplyDeleteenglish is a messed up language. it's basically a language by usage. if enough people talk a ceratin way, the rules get changed.
for example: the term "E-Mail" used to be spelled like I just used it, with the n-dash. But since so many people use that word, it is now just email. the newest dictionaries changed because of usage.
kinda crazy and very difficult to explain to someone who is just learning english.
Jacob,
ReplyDeleteCrazy but very effective. It is this flexibility that has made it such a popular language around the world. Of course, no one goes around looking for the best language to learn but the fact that you can stretch the language to describe any concept succinctly makes it the preferred choice in the majority of the cases.
this is exciting...the first conversation on my blog!
ReplyDeleteI think you're both right in some ways. It is very crazy, and I would assume hard to explain, but then again I personally like it. I think the fact that more and more countries are teaching english to their children says that it is a good choice. Adaptability is necessary to survival. Of course, that could just be saying something negative about our school system.....lets face it, America is no longer the leading nation in education.