There was a great little piece in The Guardian this week on the early findings of a new study of spoken English.
There are two reasons to read it: it's short, informative and playful (business communicators, please note); and the findings are really interesting. Who knew that fortnight was on the way out?
The results of the full study will make fascinating reading, I think. They're asking people to send in recordings of their normal conversations, and I'm tempted to do my bit. What words might make it in to those snippets of daily life? Well, as the father of a 17 year old I expect there'll be a lot of 'cash' references, repeated use of the phrase 'taxi service', and many varriations on the tonal delivery of 'again'.
In the office, 'client' has long replaced 'customer' although brothel references have not increased to the same extent. And as the client is always right, I expect 'final' will increasingly be displaced by the more realistic 'draft'.
So, what are the new words in your vocabulary?
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