“Pandemic”, “incarceration”, “covidiote” … and even “shit” are some of the words of the year chosen in different languages by different institutions in this 2020, in which the virus has completely affected all aspects of our lives, including language.
The evidence is that, unlike in previous years, where the different words of the year covered a multitude of topics, this occasion almost all revolves around some aspect of the pandemic we’ve been through for months.
“CORONA-PANDEMIA”, IN GERMAN
The institution that has the honor of starting this tradition in the 1970s with its “Wort des Jahres” is the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache or Academy of the German Language, which this year awarded the title to “Corona Pandemic” (‘ Corona Pandemic ‘).
In this sense, without major surprises, some institutions that choose the word of the year in English have moved and both the Merriam-Webster dictionary and dictionary.com have chosen “pandemic” (“pandemic”).
The American Dialect Society, another of the classics of the words of the year, has preferred “covid,” a term that, they declare, “didn’t even exist a year ago and has come to define our lives in 2020. “.
“CONFINEMENT”, “LOCKDOWN”, “ISO” …
In Spanish, it is the Fundación del Español Urgente, promoted by the EFE Agency and the RAE, which has been granting this recognition since 2013. On this occasion, the Chosen One was “incarceration,” a term referring to a reality that we have somehow suffered around the world and whose meaning has been updated this year by the Academy to adapt it to the new reality.
It coincides with the bet of another great English dictionaries, the Collins, who have opted for “lockdown”; while the National Dictionary Center in Australia has preferred “iso” which shortens “self-isolation”: “the act of staying out of the way as a way of limiting the spread of an infectious disease.”
“COVIDIOTA”
Even on that side of the world, the Macquarie dictionary, a reference to Australian English, usually chooses two words of the year: one selected by a committee of experts and one by the public. This year, so that there would be more variety, they expanded the choice even further: on the one hand the words refer to the pandemic and on the other hand the “terms of the non-pandemic part of life”.
In the first group, experts have chosen “rona”, an acronym used in Australia for “coronavirus,” while the public prefers “covidiot” (‘covidiot’), referring to those who ignore health warnings or public safety at all. the pandemic.
In the non-pandemic setting, the chosen ones were ‘doom scrolling’, a term difficult to translate into Spanish that refers to the obsession with consuming (mostly bad) news, and ‘Karen’, a proper name used in colloquial speech. is used to refer in a derogatory way for a particular type of woman (white, middle-aged, demanding, probably racist, and anti-vaccination…).
“1.5 meter society”, the society of the meter and a half
Particularly interesting is the double choice made this year by Van Dale, a publisher of dictionaries and Dutch courses who, through his followers, chooses one word of the year for the Netherlands and another for the Flemish part of Belgium.
In the first case, the winner is “one and a half meters society”, which could be translated as “society of a meter and a half (distance)”, a term used by Prime Minister Mark Rutte to define the kind of relationships in spaces. and places where society has access to the public during the pandemic.
In the flamenco variant, the word of the year is ‘cuddle contact’, something like ‘spoiling (or cuddling) companion’, a person, separate from a member of the family, with whom you may have close physical contact with the coronavirus during the crisis and that it must be the same at all times to avoid contamination.
The kanji of the year is…
The foundation that arranges the aptitude test in Japanese also chooses a representative kanji (the ideograms used in writing the Japanese language) for each year. This time, the chosen one is the ‘mitsu’, which in itself means’ full of people ‘or’ close by ‘and has become popular in a new phrase coined in times of pandemic:’ the 3 mitsu ‘(or’ the 3C “) Refers to” confined spaces “,” crowded places “and” areas of close contact “which, as instructed by authorities, should be avoided in order not to spread the contamination.
An unprecedented year
It is obvious that 2020 was a special and difficult year. So much so that Oxford University Press, which has chosen the most recognized word of the year in the English language since 2004, has given up this year. Or rather: you have decided to reorient your choice.
On their website, they explain that “2020 is not a year that can be classified in one word of the year”, so they preferred to report more fully on “the phenomenal magnitude of language change and development during the year” in a report called “Words of an Unprecedented Year”.
It analyzes the evolution of voices such as ‘covid-19’, ‘lockdown’ (‘incarceration’), ‘social distancing’ (‘physical distance’) or ‘reopening’ (‘reopening’), but also ‘forest fire’ ( ‘forest fires’) or ‘Black Lives Matter’ (‘Black lives matter’).
A worthless year
Linguistic considerations aside, the readers of the British newspaper The Guardian were already very clear about it and when asked what was the word that best describes this 2020 for them, they responded with a resounding ‘shit’ (‘shit’).
In case it wasn’t clear, second was “fucked” and third was “exhausting”. Not a very elegant trio, but with which it is not difficult to form a fairly accurate definition of what for many is the year ending today.