As of tomorrow, June 10th 2009 there will be one million documented English words in use, and one of these could be from Hinglish, a language that combines elements from Hindi and English! The Global Language Monitor is counting down to the one millionth English word, which they say will happen at 10:22 AM GMT and they are choosing a word to represent this monumental occasion. Of the contenders, there are three that stand out to us at Desi Hits!: cuddies (Hinglish word for women's underwear), jai ho, and slumdog. Notice a trend?
The word will be chosen based on a variety of statistics including the number of occurrences on the internet and in global print and the range of places it is used throughout the world. The word with the highest score in all of the categories will become English's official one millionth word. Considering that 14 new English words are being created each day it's pretty obvious that Desi culture is making waves the world over for these words to be so high up on the list.
Slumdog Millionaire seems to have gotten the linguistic ball rolling but with B-town becoming more popular everyday, who knows how many more Hinglish words will make their way into the dictionary? What do you think of this competition? Can you think of any more popular words that should be included?
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