While one media report thinks so, the site which manages the countdown has a different story to tell

In one of his unforgettable movies in his angry young man days, Amitabh Bachchan says that English is a very funny language, and he is not far from the truth. But love it or hate it, English is the language of global business.

Of course, popularity comes at a price. The Global Language Monitor (languagemonitor.com) says that it is counting words and trying to reach the millionth word in English. And Reuters, arguably one of the most respected names in the news business, has a story (Wed Jun 10, 2009 2:15am EDT) that says 'Web 2.0 crowned one millionth English word'.

What is happening?

Naturally intrigued, I checked the site of the Global Language Monitor and the site said, 'At the current pace of a new English-language word created about every 98 minutes, English will cross the Million Word Mark on June 10th, 2009 at 10:22 am (Stratford-on Avon Time)' and gave the total number of words in English as 999,985, with 15 words left before the millionth word is reached.

One question you could ask is this how can Reuters claim that Web 2.0 is the millionth word when in fact the Global Language Monitor site itself says that there are still 15 words to go? Did Reuters get it wrong, or did the Global Language Monitor count to one million and then cut out some words?

More controversy

We could convert Stratford-on Avon Time to EDT but that is hardly the point here. What interests us more is one questionu2014can you actually count the number of words in English? Is this actually possible?

If you answered 'yes' to the above question, then you have to answer another question how do you count words? Do we include/exclude words that once existed, but are today in rare usage or have completely died out?

Expert opinion

Jesse Sheidlower, who was the principal North American editor at the Oxford English Dictionary from 1999 until 2005, says in an article he wrote on slate.com that '...there's no possible way to count the actual number of words in the language, and the idea of having a running counter, as is found on GLM's home page, is absurd'.
We will never know if Web 2.0 is the one millionth word, but all this controversy is definitely going to give Web 2.0 technologies a nice boost!

QUICK TAKE
>>The Global Language Monitor says it is counting English words
>>Experts say that this is not possible
>>It is claimed that Web 2.0 is the millionth word

What is Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 refers to what is perceived as a second generation of web development and web design. It is characterised as facilitating communication, information sharing, interoperability, user-cantered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. It has led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and web applications. Examples include social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies.

Source: Wikipedia