Eyjafjallajökull - Can anyone pronounce this?

In the article called "Language eruption: What the volcano gave us," Erin McKean touches on an issue that all of us have been hearing a lot about recently: the volcano in Iceland and its sudden eruption. Many years later, we will remember the eruption of Icelandic volcano as the event that stranded many travelers and turned Europe into a place covered with ashes and anxiety. However, this is probably not the only thing we will remember - we will all remember the strange name of the eventful volcano: Eyjafjallaökull.

Through this recent event, McKean makes an important argument that languages have a great capacity for "lexical inventiveness." She mentions that after the eruption, we became more familiar with aviation and volcanic terms that we were not before. McKean adds that "any news event of sufficient magnitude," such as the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, "will leave traces behind in our language."

While I find McKean's argument quite compelling, I think that the lexical inventiveness is already present in our daily lives. We do not need to wait for such a large scale event to invent words and expand the lexicon of our language. The technology that we use everyday, for instance, has already contributed a lot to our language. Rather than saying "I am going to talk to my parents on the Internet," we prefer to say "I am going to skype with my parents." Does skype really mean anything? It is not a word that is in dictionaries. But today, we are using the name of a computer program as a verb and a noun in the English language. Today, we do not talk to our friends through Skype - we "skype" with our friends.

This is true for other languages, too. In Turkish, for example, people who use Skype use the name of the program as a verb, and nobody really questions how easily we can invent a new lexicon for our language.

The idea of "lexical incentiveness" seem to be a good thing at first glance. Our language is capable of accommodating the advancing technology and rapid changes happening in the world. Or, is it really? Is there a limit as to how many words such as "skype" a language can contain in its lexicon? Are there languages that do not accommodate new words? Does this in any way affect its speakers negatively? Or is it a good thing for a language to stay static and preserve its structure?

We are living in an era of rapid changes. A century later, more volcanoes will have erupted, more computer programs will have been written and everything will have changed drastically. And the language we use today will have changed as well. Is it then fair to say that the English language of the next century will be same as the language we use today? Today, we find it very difficult to understand Shakespearean English. Will our English be obscure to the English speakers of the future?

I believe that language is a living entity and changes itself according to the needs of its speakers. But, I doubt that we need to use the word "skype" instead of talking on the computer, or "iPhone" instead of mobile phone. Although our language will eventually change and adapt itself to our new way of living, it still needs to protect its essence and should not be a container for our fast-changing and usually meaningless terms.



Link to article: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/05/02/language_eruption/

Link to picture: http://www.skimountaineer.com/ROF/Beyond/Eyja/EyjafjallajokullWSW.jpg