Fritinancy

Global Words of the Year

While we await the January announcement of the 2006 word of the year by the American Dialect Society--the language world's equivalent of the Academy Awards--we can amuse ourselves with the Golden Globes, so to speak. Global Language Monitor, which scans the linguasphere from its headquarters in San Diego and bureaus in Europe, India, New Jersey, New England, the Bay Area, and "the Middle Kingdom," has announced its top words and catchphrases for 2006. The lists are noteworthy for their international scope. In fact, #3 on the "Top Ten Words" list is a Japanese term, hiki komori, defined as the "one million young Japanese men who avoid intense societal pressures by withdrawing into their own rooms (and worlds), rarely venturing outside." Also making the list this year: "planemo" (a celestial body like Pluto that's been demoted from planetary status), "Londonistan" (a nickname for the increasingly Asian world capital), and "infonaut" (someone who "travels blithely along the infobahn"). That last one has to be an internationalism; I've certainly never heard it spoken among the English speakers of my acquaintance.

At the top of the list: "sustainable." Not terribly sexy, but according to GLM an important term because of its migration from strictly "green" (environmental) usage into the mainstream, to refer to populations, marriages, agricultures, and economies.

Scroll down to view the more playful lists. On the Top Ten Catchphrases list you'll find "KPC" (texting lingo for "keeping parents clueless"), "airline pulp" (a Chinglish term for food served aboard airplanes), and #-) (the emoticon for "wasted"). "Stay the course" takes top honors among 2006 catchphrases.

My favorite word list, though, is Top Ten Global Youth Speak, which is beginning to be dominated by Pacific Rim countries. I love "ya-ya papaya" (from Singapore, it means "a snooty person") and "stick ice" (Chinese slang for a popsicle). By the way, the pan-Asian term for "youth speak" tops this list: it's "Yoof Speak."

Keeping my fingers crossed that Global Language Monitor repeats its popular feature from last year, Top Ten Bushisms. Heckuva job, GLM.

Odd Couples

One guy is nerdish and buttoned down. The other guy is laid back and casual. One is "uncool," the other is "cool." Yes, I'm talking about the televised debates between Mr. PC (over there on the left, in the ill-fitting suit) and Mr. Mac. (Watch one here; click "refresh" to watch others.)

But Mac and PC aren't the only mismatched duo in BrandWorld right now. In fact, odd (male) couples are the current sweethearts of the advertising rodeo.

For example:

• Fujitsu's campaign for the ScanSnap color scanner ("Eliminate Paper. Liberate Your Cool") depicts an uptight-looking guy in a suit behind a stack of paper who's raising an eyebrow at the tousle-haired, flamboyantly shirted, pendant-bedecked--and paper-free--guy to his left. The same actor appears to be playing both roles.
• Toshiba's promotion for something called e-BRIDGE technology doesn't make us choose between stereotypes; in fact, it's called "Let the Harmony Begin." Finance and IT, CFO and CIO--hey, can't we all get along? Nice try, but I find the hand-holding couples deeply creepy, especially no-neck "Vince" and geeky "Blake," who look like they met through CellBlockMatch.com.
• The Mac/PC dichotomy has even found its way to Japanese TV. Even if you don't understand Japanese (I don't), the archetypes require no translation. Once again, the uptight guy is the one who catches the virus. For another take, watch this very funny (subtitled) spoof. (Hat tip to Lost Remote TV Blog.)
• Citibank's new commercials feature a boorish, garrulous Eastern European named Roman ("I earn rewards points crazy-fast!" "Rewarding! Very, very, very rewarding!"), who wears Cold War-era leisure suits; and his much younger and more taciturn sidekick Victor, who wears bicycle gloves. Listen to an ad here and catch Slate.com ad critic Seth Stevenson's astute observation that Roman owes a lot of his shtick to Saturday Night Live's "two wild and crazy guys" of the mid-1970s--not to mention Borat. Unlike the other ads of this ilk, Citibank's aren't really about choosing sides. But they do juxtapose two guys with strikingly different personalities who nevertheless function as a weird unit. (How do they fit into the bank's long-running "Live Richly" campaign, with its Zen-koan-like slogans? Haven't a clue.)

What's up with all the at-odds couples? My theory is it's the cumulative effect of decades of formulaic buddy movies starring one (1) disheveled, trash-talking loose cannon and one (1) neatly dressed, tightly wound perfectionist. Fill in the blanks with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, John Candy and Steve Martin, Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. Invariably, the buttoned-down dude learns through painful experience to just lighten up, bro. And if it works in a 90-minute feature film or a 30-minute sitcom, it can be even more effective (and more simplistic) in a 30-second commercial.

And yet I'm bothered by all the Two Guys ads. Here's why:

• They can backfire. Despite his bad haircut, or maybe because of it, Mr. PC has become far more popular than Mr. Mac, no doubt because PC is played by John Hodgman, a much better (and funnier) actor than Justin "Mac" Long. When "cool" becomes self-conscious, it isn't cool anymore.
• They don't tell us anything important about what they're selling. "Buy me and look cool" works when you're selling sunglasses, but it's an iffier proposition when you're asking customers to make, say, a technology investment.
• Or they tell us something untrue for the sake of maintaining the fiction of antagonism. Like, for example, "PCs are only good for spreadsheets and pie charts, not for fun cool stuff." Balderdash.
• They've become a cliché. Two guys arguing. Two guys holding hands. Two guys one-upping each other. Enough with the two guys already.

And, although it feels like belaboring the obvious...

• They ignore 51 percent of the population. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the guys in all those Two Guys ads are guys. (Okay, there's one woman in the Toshiba campaign. Predictably, she's a buttoned-down, suit-wearing bean counter ... smiling broadly, so no one feels, you know, threatened.)

On this last point, really, I'm puzzled. I thought we'd moved on. Remember funny-adorable Ellen Feiss? She became a minor celebrity after starring in one of Apple's first "switch" ads back in 2002. I don't see any Ellen Feisses in technology advertising today. In fact, I can leaf through any copy of Wired magazine (yes, guys, I'm a subscriber) and draw the conclusion that women don't sell--or buy--technology. Ever. But women do buy computers and scanners and printers, just as we buy bicycles and download music and apply for credit cards. For some reason, though, a lot of ad agency guys (they're still mostly guys) aren't comfortable with that fact. Maybe they think men won't buy products and services pitched by women. Or maybe they're uncomfortable with the idea of creating humorous female spokespersons--never know when one of those angry feminists will say that's not funny.

So here's my modest but radical suggestion for Apple, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and all the others: take a commercial break from Two Guys. Take a look instead at Ellen DeGeneres's campaign for American Express to see how women can anchor funny, memorable advertising that doesn't force viewers to choose a stereotype with which to identify.

And how about this: why not hire some women to create and populate your advertising? Instead of lampooning differences and pitting Boy Versus Boy, we might actually--to borrow a slogan--think different.

When Brands Go Generic

From Brandnama, a newish naming blog based in Chennai, India, I learned that back in 2002, Austria's supreme court ruled that "Walkman" had become a generic term for "portable music player" and that Sony--maker of the original Walkman--no longer enjoyed trademark protection in Austria. There's a word for this loss: genericide, the process by which a brand name becomes a generic term. Aspirin, heroin, zipper, and escalator are examples: all were once trademarked and spelled with capital letters.

And here's another name to add to the list: espresso. I'd always assumed it was generic from the get-go--it means simply "express" in Italian--but I was wrong. According to an article in yesterday's New York Times business section, the word was coined in the 1930s by Francesco Illy, the Hungarian-born founder of Illycaffè, which is headquartered in Trieste, Italy. Mr. Illy had invented a steam-driven coffeemaker, which he named the Espresso, to replace the traditional little pots. Eventually the word became synonymous with the machine's output.

In recent years, Illy's grandson, Andrea Illy, had tried unsuccessfully to regain legal protection for "espresso." Too late, the Italian authorities told him. "As we say, the cows were already out of the barn," Mr. Illy is quoted as saying.

Rather than keep suing--or whining--Illy has cleverly appropriated "espresso" into the name of a new chain of proprietary high-end coffeehouses, Espressamente, that look like fashion boutiques. Besides coffee, the shops (there are now 120 of them around the world) sell cups and saucers designed by well-known fine artists such as Julian Schnabel (who is better known for his broken crockery) and Jeff Koons.

There are two lessons here: One, if you care about your brand and don't want to see it diluted, apply for trademark protection and make sure you renew it before it expires. Two, if you lose that protection, find another way to ensure that your customers associate your brand name with you and you alone.

What Not to Name the Business

All signs photographed within a couple of miles of my house in Oakland, California, and guaranteed unretouched.

 

Woe is me! True, "ALAS" is an acronym for the organization's Spanish-language name, and the initials spell the word for "wings," pronounced "AH-lahs." It's a nice image for "self-sufficiency." But clearly ALAS is also reaching out to speakers of English, and the alas-and-alack association is anything but hopeful.

This looks to me like Domain Desperation. As in: Mattress.com--taken. CheapMattress.com--taken. ReallyCheapMattress.com--taken. Hey, what about...? I wonder how many potential customers are as put off as I am by the convergence of "dirt" and "where I lay my head at night." Trust me: there's always a domain solution that doesn't say "We give up."

A Slavic language academy? Nope: the vowel is a short one, and the establishment is a classy day spa. But the owner seems to have been oblivious to the inherent confusion. Worse, her URL is www.polishspa.com, and the site's content makes frequent reference to "the Polish lifestyle." Something festive set to a Chopin mazurka? Or long, cold winters with nothing to eat but cabbage and kielbasa? Calling the business "Polished on Piedmont" would have maintained the concept while clarifying the pronunciation.

Jon Carroll's Christmas Quiz

For those of you outside the range of the San Francisco Chronicle, here's a link to columnist Jon Carroll's 25th annual Christmas Quiz, as diabolically challenging as ever. Jon's only rule is "No Googling," but Away With Words readers may know where else they can find the answers to Question #7:

What were the three most popular names given to American male babies in 2005? Female babies? How about between 1880 and 1890? How about between 1960 and 1970? For extra credit, what were the 10th most popular male and female baby names in 2005?

Answers will be posted tomorrow (Tuesday) in Jon's column on the SFGate.com site.

Word of the Week: Anticipointment

Anticipointment: High expectations followed by a letdown. A portmanteau of "anticipation" and "disappointment."

According to legend, the word was coined in the 1960s by a Los Angeles ad agency that used it as the punchline of a holiday card whose outside read, in paraphrase: "At this time of year, just one word sums up the feeling in all of our hearts." Now used for any instance of media or technology hype.

(I read the ad-agency story years ago and have been unable to corroborate it. Anyone?)

Word of the Year: The Early Votes

The American Dialect Society is accepting nominations for the 2006 word of the year. (Last year's ADS WOTY was the Stephen Colbert coinage "truthiness.") The ground rules:

Remember, the word of the Year is interpreted in its broader sense as a “vocabulary item”—not just single words but phrases can be nominated, too. Nominated terms do not have to be brand new, but they should be newly prominent or notable in the past year, usually by being a part of widespread discussion or importance.

Early nominations have already been submitted by a couple of linguistic luminaries. Wayne Glowka, chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society and editor of the column “Among the New Words” in the journal American Speech, sent 26 submissions, including:

chesticles    Man boobs

cut and jog   Cut and run at a slower pace

ecosexual   Person choosing dates according to a partner's green habits

nicotini   Tobacco-flavored cocktail (for smokeless bars)

tramp stamp   Tattoo at the base of a woman's spine

And from Grant Barrett, editor of the Double-Tongued Dictionary, come 16 nominations, including:

anchor baby    A child born of an immigrant to the United States, and a device by which a family can find legal foothold here

chief memory officer   A person in charge of maintaining an organization's collective knowledge, experience, and history

God wink   Something taken as evidence that a higher power is at work; a coincidence

Hummer house   An overly large single-family residence

You can nominate, too. Send words to wayne.glowka@gcsu.edu -- and add a comment here to let us know what you're nominating.

Merry .mas

"Christmas is a mess," declares Kurt Anderson, host of the always-stimulating WNYC-Public Radio International program Studio 360. It's "maybe the most important American brand," and that brand is sorely in need of a makeover. So Anderson asked Michael Bierut and his partners at the design agency Pentagram--creators of brand identities for Citibank, the New York Jets, United Airlines, and many other companies and products--to do just that. Anderson interviews Bierut about the project on this week's show (airing tomorrow evening on most stations, but you can take a listen here).

The designers identified three primary problems with Christmas as we know it:

• It's divisive: if you're not Christian, you're excluded; if you're a devout Christian, you're probably offended by the holiday's secularization.
• It's ugly: kitschy, tacky, and anachronistically Dickensian.
• It's commercial: enough said.

Everything about the brand got re-examined, from the name (deconstructed into "x.mas"--Bierut envisions creating a new Internet domain) to the color palette (shades of white that include "Kwanzaa Ivory," "Hanukkah Light," and "Dawkins Blank," in honor of noted scientist-atheist Richard Dawkins) to the icon (a versatile hand-drawn cone). There's even a new audio brand: the first five notes of "White Christmas."

Bonus for radio fans: the Studio 360 site includes Pentagram's downloadable wrapping-paper designs and a .mas card you can email to friends.

"Redesigning Christmas" is only partly a spoof. You can also view it, as I did, as a lesson in how good branding is done by some of the best professionals in the industry. In short: nothing is sacred (literally, in this case) and every detail matters (check out the slide show and note all the brand-icon extensions).

(.mas icons, above, created by Pentagram.)

Squashed!

You may recall my recent screed about "Villa Zuccone," the unfortunate name of my local condominium-project-in-progress. (In Italian, "zuccone" means "pumpkinhead" or "dunce." Not an image likely to drive up property values.) Well, someone at the development company either read my blog or decided belatedly to consult an Italian-English dictionary, because this very morning a new banner fluttered at the construction site, announcing "The Piedmont." A much sounder, if a bit less faux-Euro, choice, given that the development sits on the corner of Piedmont and Pleasant Valley avenues. There's even a spanking-new web site, which is still associated with villazuccone.com. Not for long, one hopes.

Il zuccone, è morto. Viva il zuccone!

UPDATE: The development was eventually renamed yet again. It opened to the public as "Il Piemonte"—which was my original (ahem) recommendation.

Proofreading 2.0

Does anyone still use proofreading marks in the Age of Redline? I learned the whole symbology when I was a high-school journalism student; I remember loving the elegant carets and curlicues, the helpful "stet" (let it stand), the no-nonsense "sp" (spell out).

Sometimes, though, one would pine for symbols just a tad more explicit and relevant to the task at hand. Now, thanks to illustrator Eve Corbel, one has them: the lesser-known editing and proofreading marks. At last, a succinct way to tell a blowhard author "Please change your politics" or deliver a knuckle-rapping "Remove permanently from your lexicon."

Hat tip and a deep salaam to Wes Phillips, who blogs for Stereophile about all manner of interesting stuff, like 33 names of things you didn't know had names and this audio dictionary, which provides definitions, photos, and brief sound files for 347 instruments, including the alphorn, the fangufangu, and the sackbutt.