CHAMPIONS of the English language are about to mark a momentous point in its 1,500-year history ?the creation of its 1 millionth word.
The growing use of Chinglish (Chinese-English) and dozens of other ethnic hybrids has pushed the number of words in the language to 986,120, according to Paul Payack, a Harvard-educated linguist monitoring its growth.
Chinglish terms include "drinktea", meaning closed, derived from the Mandarin Chinese for resting; and its opposite, "torunbusiness", meaning open, from the Mandarin word for operating.
Payack, who works for Global Language Monitor, a San Diego-based consultancy, said 20,000 new English words were registered on the company's databases last year ?twice as many as a few years ago. Up to 20 per cent were in Chinglish.
According to Payack, the 1 millionth word is likely to be formed this summer, confirming the domination of English in the global linguistic order.
French, which was the language of diplomacy in the 19th century but went into decline in the 20th, is said to contain just 100,000 words.
"Global English is no longer just dominated by either British English or American, but is running free and developing uniquely regional forms," said Payack.
Chinglish and up to 60 cousins such as Spanglish (Spanish-English), Japlish (Japanese-English) and Hinglish (Hindi-English) owe their rise largely to the Internet.
Payack's databases are compiled by computers combing through sources such as newspapers, television programmes and Internet blogs. Shakespeare is also examined.
Although it excludes proper names, Payack's database includes text-message words, which are evolving as consumers start buying reading matter over their mobile phones.
Payack believes that English has triumphed because it is open to change. French is less so: Its purity is watched over by the Académie Fran?aise, a literary body that defines the French language.
Professor David Crystal, the author of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, said the statistics spoke for themselves. "In the 1960s, 250 million people spoke English, but now it's closer to 2 billion, or one in three people in the world.
"That English became the first truly global language in the 1990s is beyond dispute, but there is debate about where it goes from here.
"Does it splinter into a loosely connected family of English languages, which become mutually incomprehensible again, like old Latin, or do we develop a standard global English that can be understood by all? We don't know what will happen."
