National Dictionary Day on ABC World News (must-see!)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 10/17/07, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > From: bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
> >
> > On 10/17/07, Tom Zurinskas  wrote:
> >>
> >> Good job, Ben. Is it 2 billion words in English? I thought I read somewhere 1
> >> billion.
> >
> > I was talking about the two billion words in the Oxford English Corpus
> > (which was only discussed obliquely in the snippets of the interview
> > that aired). More here:
> >
> > http://www.askoxford.com/oec/
>
> I found nothing at the site edress you gave.  Too general.

If you click through to the links on that page, you'll find plenty of
specific information. I also frequently write about the Corpus on
OUPblog:

http://blog.oup.com/category/reference/a_to_zimmer/

> Regarding the number of words, I found this below.  Turns out the 1 billion is overstated
> as it includes phrases.   See
>
> http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/26/ap/strange/mainD8H7NGDG0.shtml
>
> English Language Hits 1 Billion Words

That was a laughably bad headline that I wrote about on Language Log
even before I began my OUP affiliation:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003073.html


--Ben Zimmer

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