polarization According to FundéuRAE, it was the word of the year in Spain. Also on the candidate list War, Fentanyl either amnesty. A list that seems more like a very brief geopolitical analysis of current news, the minimum expression of a newspaper yearbook, a poem. A few words can say a lot.
Spain is by no means the only country where choosing the word of the year is a tradition: by reviewing these words we can learn more about their current state of mind or about the differences and similarities in the way they speak. See the world. The result is not very hopeful: the words chosen often reflect worrying challenges and conflicts.
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For example, the word of the year is for the American publisher Merriam-Webster, which is known for its dictionary authentic: saw a noticeable increase in searches on its online dictionary. They attribute this to the fact that we live in a world where the lines between what is true and what is false are increasingly blurred. This is where the concept of authenticity becomes more important. Some of the meanings given in the above dictionary are “not false or imitated” or “true to one's own personality, spirit or character”.
Some words were considered, although they were ultimately discarded Deepfake (Images and videos generated with AI to spread fake news, a concept with some inverse connection to authentic) or Rizz, This means charisma, style and sexual attractiveness and has become popular among young people on social networks. The latter was successful at another not insignificant institution: it was named winner by Oxford University Press. For obvious reasons once you read the press, it was also considered a dystopian candidate. In French-speaking Belgium they also use the phrase to refer to bleak prospects for the future Climate bomb, Also for obvious reasons, as voted for by the readers of the newspaper Le Soir and the viewers of the public television RTBF.
Other Anglo-Saxon dictionaries have highlighted similar words. For example, AI (through artificial intelligence) is the word from the Collins Dictionary and hallucinate It's Dictionary.com's and Cambridge Dictionary's. Double winner. In this sense, hallucinating also has something to do with technology: it is the situation in which an artificial intelligence produces false information and presents it to the user as true and factual. Artificial intelligences hallucinate: Although it may seem sparkly and novel, the term has been used in computer science since the 1970s. Any user of the ChatGPT application will have experienced one of these hallucinations when the machine starts inventing things in all seriousness.
“Barbenheimer” and “Kitawaramba”
There are other special points of view. For Financial Times columnist Stephen Bush, the word of the year has nothing to do with the dangers of technology or geopolitical challenges, but with the massive cinematic phenomenon that marked 2023. That's it Barbenheimer, the neologism that united the a priori distinctive titles of Barbie and Oppenheimer, two very different films but which appeared at the same time and at the same time dominated the public conversation and achieved great success at the box office in a period of decline in cinemas.
A Twitter composition on the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon.
C'est la hess For Associated Press (AP) correspondent John Leicester, it is the expression of the year in France. It reflects the country's growing multiculturalism because it comes from an Arabic expression, popular among young people, that means “to have problems” or “to be in poverty.” Something like having it very raw. AP asked its correspondents what the word of the year was in their target countries. As it turns out, the word of the year is in Kenya kitawaramamba, which is used to warn others that something might go wrong because of their bad actions. In Japanese zei.e. taxes, for public debate on this issue, in order to obtain funds for investments in the country's defense.
Bwa kwale This year, it has become a rallying cry against violent gangs on the streets of Haiti: neighbors sing it as they hunt criminals. According to the United Nations, three hundred of them were lynched in this way. The expression now even gives a hamburger its name. In South Africa, kuningi It denotes concern for multiple events occurring simultaneously and accurately defines the existential burden of today's citizen, beleaguered on so many fronts.
“Monster Bank” and “Crisis Mode”
The sound Monster bench was the word of the year in German-speaking Switzerland, according to the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. It refers to the merger of two banks (that very Swiss thing), UBS and Credit Suisse, which raised fears that this “monster bank” could create more risks than it solves. The silver and bronze medals also have their ring: Chatbot And Ghosting. They are all anglicisms. In French-speaking Switzerland the word was Garbage (relating to the wars and earthquakes of 2023) and in Italian, GPT. In Russia the word was last year War, as it couldn't be otherwise, and the expression of the year special military operation, The euphemism used by Putin's government for the invasion of Ukraine, the Center for the Creative Development of the Russian Language found. This year the word is different: the omnipresent AI, artificial intelligence.
The challenge of technology was presented in different countries' Words of the Year. Pictured is an exhibition about AI at the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB). Gianluca Battista
One of the most frequently commented words was the German one: crisis mode, which can be translated as “in crisis mode”, selected by the German Language Society (GfdS). According to sociologist Helmut K. Anheier in EL PAÍS, it has to do with the end of the perception that Germany, often referred to as the locomotive of Europe, is always doing well. A “fatigue and pessimism” among the population in the face of the “moderate but persistent” recession and the prospect of a bad 2024, in which high housing and energy prices, a dysfunctional immigration system or poor educational outcomes persist. They were in second and third place anti-Semitism And Inability to read (unable to read). “This list reflects reality,” clarified Andrea Ewels, General Director of the GfdS, “and the reality is currently bleak.”
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