Less is More

A few months ago while studying abroad in Australia, a friend of mine found herself engaged in a scintilating conversation with a guy she'd met in a bar. At some point after the ceremonial phone number exchange but just before she headed home, the man casually referenced his wife. Apparently, for the aforementioned Australian, holy matrimony was not an obstacle to picking up girls in bars, nor he allow it to stop him from texting my friend for several months. Another friend, studying in Bologna, discovered several weeks after she'd been dating an Italian that he had been in a serious relationship for the past three years. As more stories like these surface, one has to wonder about the current attitude toward monogamy. Has the proverbial search for a soulmate become obsolete?

Biologically speaking, monogamy makes very little sense. The average man has the theoretical ability to produce literally hundres of children, whereas the average woman has a much smaller reproductive capacity. Humans, along with some species of birds, and some other primates, are on a rather short list of monogamous animals. Even among humans, there are many cultures that do not practice monogamy. It has been, and remains, a largely Occidental concept.

But even in the so-called "Western" world, true monogamy appears to be losing ground. With the onset of the "hook-up" culture, even formal dating seems to be on the decline. Many just don't see the appeal of committing to one person.

Maybe monogamy only existed because it was encultrated at some point into Occidental society, but that doesn't diminish its value. Be it a blessing or a curse, humans are highly emotional beings, and even the most hard-hearted players and most skittish committment-phobes must admit that from an emotional standpoint, monogamy is at the very least a nice concept. Having an exclusive connection with someone without the stress and insecurity that comes with playing the proverbial game certainly contributes positively to emotional health.

I don't see monogamy as a moral high ground; sometimes fooling around just works. But perhaps the utter rejection of committment isn't desirable in the long run. There must be a reason monogamy has been so prevalant for so many years, and I think we should give it some thought before we kiss it goodbye as we did romance and chivalry.

999,998... 999,999... 1 Million?

How many words are there in the English language? According to the Global Language Monitor, a website that has developed a mathematical formula for determining the rate of creation of new English words, the count has just reached 1,000,000 this Wednesday. But are the building blocks of sentence formation really enumerable?

The Oxford English Dictionary contains 600,000 words. Most agree that the English language contains many words that haven't yet made it into the dictionary, particularly those which can be classified as jargon or slang. But how many more words exist beyond the clearly defined and universally accepted 600,000?

To even begin to conceptualize the answer to this question, one would have to clearly define what constitutes a word. The website's only prerequisite is that the word is understood in 60% of the English-speaking world. However, there are many adulterations of the English language that are widely understood while not quite reaching word status. Say "funnest" or "stupidest" anywhere English is spoken and rest assured you'll be understood, regardless of the fact that neither of the aforementioned utterences are considered words. And what if a word has many meanings in different contexts? The word "sketchy" can be used to convey the uncertainty of details or the discomfort of a situation. Would it be counted as one word or two?

While it is certainly an interesting idea, attempting to count the number of words in the English language is like attempting to count to infinity. Language is not a quantatative entity. What is important is not how many words exist, but what you can do with them.