Bokeh becomes a verb, by Apple

Is it not soooooo exciting to see the birth of a new word?! It certainly was so when I saw a new ad by Apple. The ad is about the depth control of iPhone, and three mothers talk about how the picture of a child is blurred by using the word "bokeh".

Bokeh comes from a Japanese word ぼけ (blurr, hazy), and my ignorance pains me, but the word is fairly universal in the world of photography. The word was introduced and popularized in 1997 in a photography magazine. The Japanese word ぼけ has several meanings, but the photographic technical term bokeh means a kind of artistic haziness / blur, and photographic magazines takes it up as technical topics in their articles. Back then, the term bokeh was used as a noun, which seems to be the usual start of neology ('to achieve great bokeh', 'bokeh produced by ** lens', 'creative application of bokeh' ),.

Now, the noun bokeh has come to a new phase - it has become a verb! And I feel that it will be firmly and casually accepted in our vocabulary, owing to the power of Apple. The mothers in the ad talks as below:

mother 1 : Did you bokeh my child?
mother 2 : Um, no, that was totally unintentional...
               Look, I can un-bokeh, see...  Bokeh, un-bokeh.
mother 1 : Wow, what kind of person bokehs a child?
               I would never bokeh your child.


The word is so naturally conjugated as a regular transitive verb, used in interrogative sentence, affixable too.

This verb-ing of the word may already have been done among photograph enthusiasts, but the impact of the ad by the "Apple" certainly will get the word accepted universally.

Oh, and please do read the comments sent to the article  about this verb-ing of Bokeh by Apple. Many photograph lovers write about the word bokeh, how the term was used as a noun first, and it does not mean just a blur but the quality needs to be considered... etc.

Yahoo! Attempted Genericide

It was not only Bing that attempted genericide. I found this movie on YouTube which campaigns Yahoo's search engine. The title of the commercial, and the final catch phrase is

'Do you Yahoo?'

It clearly uses the trademark in verb form.

Fortunately, it is only attempted genericide.
The trademark is still well and thriving, though it does not line up to top Google...

Bing! Attempted genericide

For Google it is a serious matter that its trademark is on the verge of generification, that it might lose its power as a trademark and become a general verb. The word Google has almost become a synonym 'to search something on the Internet using a search engine'.

For the rival company, Google's popularity is something that they envy and want. Bing is also a search engine like Google, but like Coke and Pepsi rivalry, Bing is a little behind in history for it to compete with Google the great. However, the CEO of the company Steve Ballmer has mentioned in an interview in New York Times in 2009 that he sees potential in the trademark 'to verb up.'

The phrase "Bing it!" has been used in an episode in Hawaii Five-O series, but it did sound a little odd there.

Bing's attempt to gain popularity is the same as risking the life of a trademark -  it's an attempted genericide. Fortunately or unfortunately, it has not verb-ed up yet like Google.

"Bing it"

"I'm lookiting"

I used to collect "Peanuts" comic books when I was very young. It sort of became a rule in me to buy a new book when the family went on a holiday trip and read it through during the trip. I think I was about 8 when I started this, and I still have the books I got then.

There is one comic strip that I remember very clearly, and it happens to be about inflecting a new verb.

Charlie Brown's friend is jumping rope, and she wants him to look at her. Here is the comic strip.

(by Charles Schulz   Feb, 18th 1963)

"I'm lookiting!"

I found it very funny.

I liked the sound very much and I remember saying it over and over, I'm lookiting, I'm lookiting!

Lookit is 'look it', meaning to look at it. 

The little kids in Peanuts must be around 7. Children around that age have fairly good command of their mother tongue, but most of their knowledge of the language is acquired verbally, from 'strings of sounds'. Unlike written language, verbally produced language does not have any markers to tell where are the starts and ends of words or sentences. Then how can a child know when hearing a sentence if the verb contained is an intransitive or a phrasal verb or a transitive verb that needs an object?

It is very plausible that the children in that linguistic stage to make a rough guess about the word (in this case, verb) using the cues they get from the pauses and breaks of sound.

For the girl and Charlie, 'lookit' was one verb. She may have heard some grown-ups around her using it like "Oh, look it!" She uses it in imperative, Charlie uses it in present continuous form, although he has never heard it before. He applied the regular rule of forming a present continuous. It seems that Linus was the only one who knew that there was no such verb as 'lookit'.

Children cleverly and productively create maximum output from the minimum grammatical knowledge they have. Whenever they have no example to refer to, they go for the regular rule. 

To google - why it is a regular verb - Part 1

In my earlier entry Google - worldwide genericide, there was a list of verbs "to google" in other languages, and I noted that all the verbs that show regular verb inflection. Why are they regular verbs? Let me show you here what happens when a new verb enters our language by looking at language acquisition of children learning English as their first language.

Preschool children (age 4 to 6) start talking in sentences, and they also start using their knowledge of morphology quite cleverly and productively. They encounter numerous new words everyday, but they somehow figure out the new words' parts of speech and how to inflect them.

We often see children make errors like breaked or comed - they overgeneralize the regular verb inflection rules to irregular verbs to make past tense. Unfortunately for children acquiring language, ten most frequent verbs in English, which could also be equivalent to ten most frequent verbs that the children need to learn early in life, are all irregular verbs (be, have, do, say, make, go, take, come, see, get). Regular verbs come lower in frequency, but children, when they make past tense, apply productively the regular verb inflection rule, adding -d to the verb, to new verbs they encounter.

Berko (1957) has shown in experiments (so called wug test) with preschool children the over-application of regular inflectional rules of nouns and verbs in nonsense words.

Number of nonsense monosyllabic words were made up, and pictures to represent the nonsense words were drawn on cards. A text, omitting the desired form was typed on each card. Children, and also adult subjects as control group, were shown the cards and the text read, and were induced to say the nonsense word in the inflected form. Here is an example of the question forming past tense.

This is a man who knows how to RICK. He is RICKING. He did the same thing yesterday. What did he do yesterday?
Yesterday, he ..............................

Over 76 percent of the children answered RICKED. They apply the regular inflection rule to the nonsense word. The percentage is higher of adult subjects. They are applying regular suffixing rule to form the past tense.

Inflections of irregular verbs, on the other hand, are memorized, stored in their memory.

In the human mind, the memory and rule interact in a fairly simple way (Pinker 1999) - if a word can provide its own past tense form from memory, the regular rule is blocked, but elsewhere, by default, the rule applies. That's why adults and children can inflect the nonsense word because there are no memorized inflected forms that is stored in the memory.

A new word "to google", which has no memory stored information on its past tense, has to be inflected in regular form.

(to be continued)

Berko, J. (1958) The child's learning of English morphology.  Word, 14, 150-177
Pinker, S. (1999) Words and Rules  New York N.Y. : Harper Perrenial

Google - A worldwide Genericide 03

Google is a company specialized in Internet related services and products, and their search engine is used world-wide. When people want to search for information on the Internet, they 'google' it.

Yes, Google is also a victim of genericide, and the word 'to google' is used as a transitive verb meaning 'to search for information about something or someone on the Internet using the Google search engine.' A lot of people use the verb 'to google' to refer to 'looking up on the Internet', so they could be using bing or YAHOO, and it does not necessarily mean to use 'Google'.

The verb 'to google' entered Merriam Webster dictionary and Oxford dictionary in 2006.

What is amazing about Google is that the search engine has diffused globally and the generification of the word 'to google' has also become world-wide (How do you say google in other languages).

Here are some 'google's in other languages.

German : googlen
French : googler
Italian : googlare
Spanish : googlar
Dutch : googlen
Portuguese : googlar
Turkish : googlemek
Russian : googleet
Japanese : ググる guguru

Google genericide is pandemic, it is thoroughly world-wide... It is unstoppable.

Also, what is notable about all these verbs is that the verbs inflect in regular pattern, non of them are irregular verbs.

Check the regular verb endings in the above given languages.

German : -en
French : -er
Italian : -are
Spanish : -ar
Dutch : -en
Portuguese : -ar
Turkish : -mek
Russian : -ti

They are regular verbs because they are language generated by human beings. The reason? to be continued in the later articles.

to Photoshop - Genericide 02

Photoshop is a trademark of Adobe, and it is a widely used photo manipulation software. This trademark has become a victim of genericide, and it is commonly used as a verb too. Internet articles and tabloids talk about "photoshopped celebrities". Here are some examples of article titles with Photoshop used as a verb.

21 Celebrities before and after they were Photoshopped.
(http://www.lifebuzz.com/photshopped-celebrities/)

This is what happens when you Photoshop celebrities into your holiday party.
(http://twistedsifter.com/2012/03/photoshopping-celebrities-into-holiday-party/)

Tool reveals how much celebs and models are Photoshopped.
(http://www.boredpanda.com/photoshopped-celebrities-before-after/)

Although flattered by the popularity of the software and the usage of the trademark, Adobe does not allow the trademark to be used as common nouns or verbs. The company has press released the guidelines of the usage of the trademark.
https://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressmaterials/pdfs/photoshop_guidelines_pr.pdf

The official release does not seem to have stopped the abuse. There is now an entry of 'Photoshop' in Merriam Webster Dictionary.

transitive verb
to alter (a digital image) with Photoshop software or other image-editing software especially in a way that distorts reality (as for deliberately deceptive purposes)

As a generic verb, it also carries a touch of negative nuance. According to the dictionary, the first known use was in 1992.

Words, or language is a natural object. When it starts evolving, it cannot be stopped.

Kleenex, Xerox, Hoover and Walkman - Genericide 01

A new product comes into our life, we find it very practical and easy to use that it soon becomes indispensable. Kleenex tissue, Xerox photocopy machine, Hoover vacuum cleaner and Walkman portable music player are some examples of that kind of essential goods.

What is notable about the examples given above is that Kleenex, Xerox, Hoover and Walkman are brand names or trademarks, but the names have become common nouns because of their popular usage to refer to the generic name of the product. One can say 'pass me some Kleenex' to mean 'pass me some tissue paper', and likewise, Xerox means photocopy, Hoover a vacuum cleaner, and Walkman a portable music player. Xerox and Hoover can also be used as verbs.

'Would you go and Xerox these for me?'

'Just leave the broken pieces there, I'll Hoover them right away.'

Walkman, officially, only refers to portable music players made by Sony, but most people use it to refer to portable music players no matter if it is a product of KENWOOD.

These are called genericide, a legal term, which refers to once brand names or trademarks turned into common nouns. They have not lost their validity as proper trademark nouns but they have died as trademarks. They refer to not only their brands but also to same functioning products made by other companies. That's why the term has -cide ending.

It is ironic for the companies - the products have become so well known and popularly used but the brands name or the trademarks have also become too popular that they can refer to other products. The companies try in every way to stop the genericide of their brand names or trademarks.

Becoming too popular can be a double-edged sword.

Verbing new nouns

New inventions and technological developments bring changes in our lifestyle, and thus bring changes in our language too. Here are some noun converted verbs that came into our vocabulary in the 20th century. The number in the parenthesis show the year first seen in usage as a verb

to taxi (1918)
to fax (1948)
to email (1982)

Prior to the usage of these verbs, the products were invented respectively. Modern taxicabs appeared in London in 1897, the first wireless 'radio' facsimile was invented in America in 1924, and emails were used by researchers in laboratories in 1960s.

A new product comes into the lifestyle and if there are no other existing verbs that describe its function, we easily turn the the noun to a verb and make our language more convenient.

Steven Pinker notes in "The Language Instinct"(1994) that one fifth of the verbs in English are derived from nouns.

...easy conversion of nouns to verbs has been part of English grammar for centuries; it is one of the processes that make English English."

He extensively gives examples of verbs which were originally nouns:

head a commitee, scalp the missionary, eye a babe, nose around the office, mouth the lyrics, gum the biscuit, begin teething, tongue each note on the flute, jaw at the referee, neck in the back seat, back a candidate, arm the militia, shoulder the burden, elbow your way in, hand him a toy, finger the culprit, knuckle under, thumb a ride, writs it into the net, belly up to the bar, stomach someone's complaint, rib your drinking buddies, knee the goalie, leg it across town, heel on command, foot the bill, toe the line.......

(I just admire Steven Pinker!)

Language is incessantly changing to reflect the world we live in.