Paul JJ Payack

I'll admit it: I am a language geek. Or worse.

By the time I was eight or ten years old, I was devouring every book containing "fascinating facts" I could get my hands on. I would memorize random information and then entertain (some might say terrorize) my family and friends with it. Not only would I ask them how tall Mt. Everest was, I would want them to compare the current measurement with earlier estimates! (Actual height of Mt. Everest: 29,028 feet. Previous recorded height: 29,000 feet. "Official" height for many years: 29,002 feet, a number chosen because it sounded more "real" than the actual, round number.)

Once I reached high school, I became even more obsessed with this sort of information, and I spent my time thinking about such things as: What would happen if you emptied out "bottomless" Lake Tahoe? (The entire state of California would be covered with 14 inches of water.) Or pondering facts like: A typical human brain has about 10 billion neurons, and each neuron can theoretically be connected to every other neuron. (Meaning that there are more potential interconnections in the human brain than there are elementary particles in the universe. Which explains a lot.)

While in college, I discovered that Olympus Mons on the planet Mars is actually far taller than Mt. Everest, towering some 88,585 feet over the Martian surface. I wrote to the editors of the Guinness Book of Records, explaining that this mountain should be listed as the "Tallest Mountain in the World." If, that is, you accept the definition of "the world" as "the sphere of human existence." Guinness listed it in the next edition, but labeled it the "tallest mountain in the solar system." Pshaw!

As I approached twenty, my mania for facts gradually evolved into a passion for words. Words, after all, were where the facts were hidden. I looked for the most interesting etymologies (etymology, from the French, etymologie; from the Latin etymologia; from the Greek, etymologia, the true account and analysis of a word; from etymos, the true literal sense of a word, and logos, description; from legein, Greek, to speak) I could find. I had always compared data from various sources: as a 'tween' (a relatively new word in the English language), it was the World Almanac vs. the Information Please Almanac vs. the Columbia Viking Desk Encyclopedia and the like. Now it was The Oxford English Dictionary, Compact Edition, unabridged (with requisite magnifying glass) vs. The Oxford English Dictionary of Etymology vs. Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary vs. American Heritage Dictionary. I pored over them all, looking for discrepancies.

None of them were safe.

At Bucknell University, I also embarked on what many would consider a rather peculiar quest: to learn the etymology--not, mind you, the definition, but the etymology--of every word. I began looking up each word I couldn't already trace back to its roots, and I continued this project until I stopped coming across words whose origins were unfamiliar to me. It took about ten years.

Once I got to Harvard, where I was studying comparative literature and dead languages, I decided I would also read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. I wowed my friends with superfluous (but always fascinating) information: "I'm finishing up the letter K. Today's the day to ask me anything you need to know about anything that begins with the letter K!"

After college, I took a short detour into academic administration for a small college in Boston's Back Bay. Then I moved into the high tech world, at a time when there were only approximately 180 'nodes' in the world. (Nodes: points where computers can connect to one another. Today there are over 2 billion 'nodes' in the world.) In the high tech jargon of the '80s and '90s I would have qualified as a 'dinosaur;' today I qualify as 'primeval slime' or 'primordial ooze'. Your choice.

Given my lifelong passion for words, I finally decided--after stints as a senior executive at three Fortune 500 companies and half a dozen Silicon Valley start-ups, spin-outs, and spun-downs--to turn my avocation into a vocation. In 1999, I launched yourDictionary.com (YDC) with two partners (George Wilson, an entrepreneur and friend; and Dr. Robert Beard, AKA Dr. Langauge).

YDC has since grown into one of the largest language destination sites on the planet, with more than 10 million page views a month. (We bought the rights to YDC's immediate predecessor, a Web of On-line Dictionaries, the first major multi-lingual dictionary site on the web - way back in 1994.)

In 2003, I went one step further and established the Global Language Monitor (GLM), which systematically tracks, analyzes, and documents trends in the English language from all corners of the globe. I devised a proprietary algorithm, the Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI), for tracing the frequency of words and phrases in the global print media, on the Internet, and throughout the Blogosphere.

At GLM, we began to look at English as Global English. Rather than focusing on geography (British English, American English, Caribbean English) or the psychogeography of the mind (Victorian English in the Late 19th century), we focused on usage--how English is spoken, by worldwide youth (Global YouthSpeak), by corporations, by the entertainment world, and the like. With the help of an international assemblage of professors, professional wordsmiths, and bibliophiles--our Language Police--GLM has been documenting the latest developments in the evolution of the English language.

The results of our collective efforts have been astounding, and many in international print and electronic media (such as CNN, The New York Times, and PBS) and in the world of academia (at USC's Annenberg Centers for Communication and Public Diplomacy, Columbia University, the California Institute of Technology, and many other universities and institutions throughout the world) now rely on GLM for our expert analysis on language trends and their impact on politics, culture, and business. We've even supplied Answers (their unique forms of Questions) to Jeopardy, the classic television show.

We've also come to realize that there are several momentous trends that are occurring in the English language of today:

1) A vocabulary explosion: the number of everyday words we use to communicate--those recorded in dictionaries, in newspapers, in blogs and on the internet, in correspondence to our loved ones, in classroom assignments, in paying our bills, and in recording our history-- is expanding at an unprecedented rate, the total approximating 1,000,000 at this very moment; and

2) A geographic explosion: the English language, which at the time of Shakespeare was spoken in a narrow band in the south of Britain by only a few million people, has suddenly, and rather unexpectedly, become the language of global discourse, commerce, science, entertainment, and communications, with speakers now approximating 1.58 billion people.

As a lifelong lover of the English language, nothing could make me more pleased. And I'm thrilled to be a continuing witness to its evolution, watching and anticipating the countless new ways it will impact the lives of billions around the globe for decades (and even centuries) to come.

(The above appeared in a slightly differing form, in 'A Million Words and Counting'.)