Hacker News Reader

Comment by ainar-g | Hacker News Reader

> Although studies have examined phubbing in many different relationships, little is known about friend phubbing (Fphubbing).

I understand that “language grows”, and that it often does so chaotically and in a non-organised way, and all that stuff, but as a non-native English speaker, I often find myself wondering if English—and in particular modern English—is just trolling us at this point.

View on HN

The language? No. Starving academics of the humanities, desperately trying to come up with "catchy" concepts? Absolutely.

I think academic english in particular is guilty of this. I think there are two pressures: first is common, and that is wanting/needing specialized language to communicate better about a specific field, second is particular in that it can make some one feel better about their paper if they coin new words or phrases. I'm unsure if this actually translates into better publication rates but I've definitely seen papers sort of reach so they can introduce a new term.

You are basically correct. this word is nonsense and NOBODY uses it.

The author is using a funny sounding made up word to attract interest to their research.

Not true. I've known this phenomenon by its name for well over a year. Not sure the origin. Yes, it's nonsense. But plenty of people use here in the Bay Area. This wasn't made up just for this article.

Also, the word is nonsense just the practice. Pay attention to what and who is in front of you. Eyes up, please.

Languages evolve and dictionaries document rather than prescribing.

This doesn't mean that you are not allowed to have an opinion as to whether a particular linguistic development is a good thing.

Not trolling, English has perhaps always been a bit more dynamic, having its roots in what arguably started out as a creole language [0]. Linguists disagree with each other on that point, but English does have its roots in a bunch of different languages. This contributes to a general lack of consistency across the language, and in the absence of more concrete rules it may end up being a little more flexible when it comes to certain things, more accepting of coining new words rather than turning to existing words.

See also "The Great Vowel Shift" as another example contributing to the roots of English in more dynamic change [1]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English_creole_hypoth...

[1]

English was/is not a creole. That's a misreading of things. Rather it was creolised. The linked Wikipedia article mentions this, but it could be more explicit. Old English didn't die out and get replaced by a weirdly similar yet simpler language, but evolved into Middle English over time.

Creoles are descended from pidgins that later become full languages, i.e., they become more complex. Creolised languages, on the other hand, are languages that simplify radically due to contact with other language groups. Now, the _outcome_ might be similar, but the difference in terminology is useful to distinguish the direction of change.

It doesn't take long for this kind of thing to happen, and we have prominent written evidence of this in the form of Afrikaans, which began as a creolised form of Dutch, which was already one of the more straightforward West Germanic languages.

To say something is creolized but not a creole is a bit of a contradiction given that creolization is the process by which something becomes a creole. Unless you mean that it underwent a change that has some characteristics of creole, but did not fully make the leap? That would make more sense, and pretty much in line with the "it is not a full creole" dominant opinion in the field. The minority opinion is that the others are splitting hairs about where the line is for a sufficient amount of simplification over a given time period.

The authors of the study just made up these words.

I've never heard of "phubbing" before either, but according to Wikipedia the origins of the word trace back to 2012:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phubbing

Coined by an advertising agency.

This is a portmanteau nobody needs and few people want. I've not heard the term before and hope it doesn't catch on. It is cumbersome.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com