Motherfoclóir

157: #157 | Focal Point : Ireland's Word of the Year 2020

Motherfoclóir

Show Notes

As December staggers towards the manhole of time and we all wait for it to fall in, a lot of linguistically minded people around the world consider what the word of the year is. All the big dictionaries do. What word best describes these past twelve months? What words have people been using most frequently? And what new words have been added in this time?

At Motherfoclóir we're not so different and in today's episode Peadar and Darach discuss 2020's foclóir nua and research by Kevin Scannell on word searches in the Irish language online. The lads look at words added to the tearma.ie database and reflect on what workers in that role have to consider when presenting a new word. They have their own suggestions too!

And as pop-culture in other languages grows in influence in the Anglo sphere and beyond we speculate wildly about the future of English.

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