![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
hober with his mad text consumption has his eyes, ears, and fingers on the pulse of the potential users of such a word, and he keeps me up to date on any new words and expressions that appear in that sphere. Nary a peep, yet.Of course, the linguists at Language Log should be on the cutting edge of such developments--perhaps it will only take Dr. Zimmer's post to put the word in sight, sound, and motion by the people who need to use it in order for it to attain proper neologism status.
I noticed that there's an expression ripe for transition to a neologism in Dr. Zimmer's post: he suggests an "R" for Resistance to public backlash be added to the FUDGE neologism rules. I agree. But thus we get a new acronym: FUDGE + R. We don't have to make it FUDGER, though. Why not FURDGE? Or FRUDGE?
Anyway, I got off track. I just wanted to ask y'all what you think about this word, sisomo. Is it good? Do you think you can work it into your everyday conversations? Do you want to?
Profile
- kirinqueen
- Erin O'Connor
- erin.oconnor.cx
Page Summary
- sarahparah : (no subject) [+0]
- johntchoe : (no subject) [+1]
- madbard : (no subject) [+17]
- nebyoolae : (no subject) [+1]
- tone_milazzo : (no subject) [+1]
- browascension : (no subject) [+2]
- brkvw : (no subject) [+1]
- brkvw : (no subject) [+0]
- theinimitable_l : (no subject) [+1]
- other : FRIDGE!!!! [+2]
- madbard : (no subject) [+1]
- tinkerbell_mk : siso-no [+1]
- boobirdsfly : (no subject) [+1]
Comments
(I overlooked your comment in the back-and-forth with Mike.)
Seriously: what part of speech does the word purport to be?
Dude suggests that like google, it is noun and verb:
Once you're contorting your mouth around that long O, there's no quick recovery to another phoneme. You need a period to give you time to recover.
Can't we ditch the word and start over?
I say we just ditch the suggested pronunciation rather than the entire word. We could easily substitute schwa for that middle o#&650 to make it more Englishy.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean about "acrobatics of going from 's' to 'o'": this is not hard. I don't find "sore", for example, difficult to pronounce.
Er, did you read my critique above? "Sisomo" has a lot more phonetic baggage than "go".
> I don't find "sore", for example, difficult to pronounce.
"Sore" doesn't have a long "o". When you pronounce the latter, your tongue has to drop all the way to the back of your throat. "Sow-er" is a lot harder to say than "sore".
"Sore" has just as much of a "long o" as "sisomo". Listen to the pronunciation on the web page. Anyway, your argument says you have a problem with the first diphthong (oʊ), which is what I was suggesting be changed to a monophthong (o). So I'm agreeing with you.
But my critique is from a practical rather than theoretical standpoint. "Sisomo" is awkward to pronounce, and non-idiomatic for the English language. This is because it was clearly coined for flashiness rather than semantic logic.
And this is really the heart of the problem. "Sight" "sound" and "motion" don't represent the essence of the denoted concept. After all, throwing a baby down a stairwell would equally involve all three. The word is really an attempt to contrive a hip slang term for "portable audiovisual device". An acronym would work much better. So thumbs-down to a faux-word which doesn't even properly identify its subject matter.
(I don't think we're in strong disagreemnt. I'm just lazier than you when it comes to pronunciation, which makes plenty of sense given your profession.)
Yes, "coined for flashiness rather than semantic logic" is approximately what Dr. Zimmer meant when he said the term is a graphemic blend rather than a phonemic one, except substitute "phonetic" for "semantic" in your phrase. Semantic logic has little to do with actual language usage. Rule number one of language is that the connection between a word and the thing it signifies is arbitrary.
But there is no reason to use "sisomo" to describe throwing a baby down a stairwell, any more than you would use specialized medical jargon to talk about music. As I noted to someone else, the word is particular to marketing, or at least to the spheres where Flash is useful to convey ideas.
True. But words that are built of other word fragments or affixes should have clear and consistent relationships to their components. Sisomo doesn't.
> But there is no reason to use "sisomo" to describe throwing a baby >down a stairwell, any more than you would use specialized medical >jargon to talk about music. As I noted to someone else, the word is >particular to marketing, or at least to the spheres where Flash is >useful to convey ideas.
There's a difference, though. Medical jargon is necessary because of an extreme need for precision in the field, and very high stakes. The subject matter consists of a galaxy of concretes - specific parts and processes of the human body. A misidentification during the heat of surgery could cost a human life.
Music, while obviously less of a life-or-death issue, also requires lots of precision during realtime. For example, a conductor needs to be able to direct a musician's attention to one minute aspect of a giant complex performance. In both the above cases, the teminology is justified by the subject matter.
On the other hand, I'm not sure marketing "concepts" always are justified in this fashion so much as self-justifying. Without nebulous, constantly-changing lingo, some marketing people might not be employed. Some terms end up being useful, and others less so. In some cases, I'm not sure the terms have referents at all. Does "multimedia", the hot tech buzzword of the mid-90's, convey a clear meaning to you? I use it on my website, and I'm still not sure what it means.
In short: doctors good, marketing people bad. Or at least, they're on heavy linguistic probation.
It does as much as any acronym does. Each syllable stands in for another word which is part of the meaning of this word.
On the other hand, I'm not sure marketing "concepts" always are justified in this fashion so much as self-justifying. Without nebulous, constantly-changing lingo, some marketing people might not be employed. Some terms end up being useful, and others less so. In some cases, I'm not sure the terms have referents at all. Does "multimedia", the hot tech buzzword of the mid-90's, convey a clear meaning to you? I use it on my website, and I'm still not sure what it means.
In short: doctors good, marketing people bad. Or at least, they're on heavy linguistic probation.
I agree. Buzzwords tend to get overused to the point of cliche, and nothing renders something meaningless to me quicker than overuse.
No no no no! I don't care that it was a cliche. I care that it was literally meaningless. The problem I'm attacking here is that of psuedoconcepts. If a word has no clear referent, it's not a word. If its referent are a series of things that don't necessarily belong together, or can better be expressed by an existing concept, it's a bad word.
You are being a very good linguistc by maintaining your dipolmatic and analytical stance. But gol durn it, girl, you need to learn to lay the smackdown once in a while.
... We've travelled quite a distance here. But we do agree that sisomo is yucky, right?
Also, being a linguist doesn't have anything to do with being lazier or more strict about pronunciation. It's about observing the actual pronunciations that occur in language and why. I'm not here to tell anyone the rules they are supposed to follow but don't. When we talk about rules in linguistics, we're describing patterns that actually occur, in order to account for how someone can (for example) know how to pronounce a word he's never seen before. None of these rules are articulated by anyone but linguists, but we only do it because we're trying to figure out what our brains do when processing and producing language, not because knowing the rules will make us the arbiters of language usage.
But I'll probably just keep calling it a "walkman" out of habit, to save myself some time and to deter eavesdropping thieves.
I think it's a marketing word, though, which means it is not an everyday word for everybody, but part of the jargon for people who are selling ideas with Flash animation. (Not for people who are putting stories on mobile devices, as my original explanation implies. Or at least, I would like to amend my explanation after having a look at sisomo dot come.)
So 10 years down the line it will still be called a Cell phone, or just “cell” since that is the one function people would not give up.
I expect "handy", as it is in Germany, will stick around for this reason as well.
There is another point though. Sometimes we “need” a new word. Not just because we are board with the old words, but because the new word means “new thing” (even if very similar to “old thing”).
For example, in Japan if you ask for a towel, they call it a taoru (try to say it as if it is one syllable). The western ear might think, hey, that sounds like “towel,” good, because it is! So what the hell did they call it before meeting the western culture? Turns out they did not exactly have towels. They have a little cotton washcloth called a tenugui, we would consider it more like something we would buff a car with (which is sort of how they use it). They have another word for something even smaller called an oshibori, which is what we would call those little real cotton hot wet napkins (wet naps?) they give you on planes. So why did they take the name taoru (or towel)? Because our towels are bigger (and better), we use them next to that other invention, the puuru.
For them it is sort of fun to call things by these new words. We use the word Skosh as in “a little” which I suspect we use because it is really less than a little. It comes from the word sukoshi. But it is a cool word, because it conveys moderation.
I think a word for something that is handheld that does sound and video is useful, although I would prefer something like just “player.” There is also the arguments that these silly words might serve there purpose in a transient definition of technology. In 2 years most players will be built into the cell phone, along with much better cameras. Sisesosamo (sight seen sound said). We will need a simply cool word for this.
tone_milazzo’s point of just calling it a walkman is good, but Sony, who is on the outs right now might need the income stream from the lawsuits that would fly, so we might need to stay away from that. iPud would have the same problem, even if it does become the #1 device to watch porn.
In SCUBA, that thing you strap to your wrist that tells you your depth, and how long until you can fly a plane….they call that a…”computer.”
In bicycling, that thing that you attach to your handlebars that tells your speed, odometer, time, etc…they call that a “computer.”
I suspect that the most common functionality will drive the name. So 10 years down the line it will still be called a Cell phone, or just “cell” since that is the one function people would not give up.
BTW, I always thought Sisomo was mexician for "having balls".
... We've travelled quite a distance here. But we do agree that sisomo is yucky, right?
;)