Googlear

RECENT POSTS

June 13, 2011 | 4:33 PM | By

The cultural mashup dictionary: Tweecanos

Photo by TexasT

I’ve never met @xicano007, but a tweet from this East L.A. blogger and sports card collector brings us yet another entry for our evolving dictionary of cultural mashup terms: tweecanas and tweecanos.

Here’s how it was used, in a tweet from yesterday mentioning an upcoming performance by Aztlan Underground:

RT @xicano007: Next Saturday at the BLVD in BOYLE HEIGHTS join @Aztlanug @laloalcaraz & some tweecanas/tweecanos for a night of rebeldia

It’s perfect. Not sure if @xicano007 coined it, but who cares? Plus it sounds like a great show.

Multi-American’s cultural mashup dictionary kicked off this spring. It’s a collection of occasional entries, bits and pieces of the evolving lexicon of words, terms and phrases coined as immigrants and their descendants influence the English language, and it influences them.

We’ve been on a social media kick so far, with entries like Googlear and Twittear and Feisbuk. The series started off with the meaning and etymology of the term 1.5 generation.

Have suggestion for an entry? Feel free to post it below.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, 1.5 generation, Aztlan Underground, Cultural mashup dictionary, Feisbuk, Googlear, Language, Twittear
April 25, 2011 | 10:11 AM | By

The cultural mashup dictionary: Twittear and Feisbuk

Photo by TexasT

A recent post on the neologism Googlear has inspired two related entries to Multi-American’s evolving cultural mashup dictionary: The social media mashup terms Twittear and Feisbuk.

First, the Wiktionary definition of twittear:

Etymology

From the online microblogging website, Twitter.

Verb

twittear (first-person singular present twitteo, first-person singular preterite twitteé, past participle twitteado)

1. (Internet) to tweet

I’ve used and heard “twittear” among Spanish-English bilinguals for quite a while, but there’s also this adaptation below, as posted in the comments under the “googlear” post by ar2ro:

more than likely i see “el twitter” being used more in time than “twittear.”

ex: ya mandaste el tweet? (did you send the tweet?)
mire tu mesaje en el twitter. (i saw you message on twitter)
me gusta el twitter (i like twitter)

twittear somehow does not sound right. even googlear sounds a bit funky, but does roll off the tongue in spanish rather well.

Then there’s Feisbuk, which began as a Spanish-friendly unofficial phonetic spelling for “Facebook” but has taken on a life of its own. There are Feisbuk Facebook pages, a spoof analog version, even a page inspired by an alternate pronunciation (“Feisbul”) called “mi mama dice feisbul,” or “my mother says feisbul.”

“Twittear” has been similarly inspirational: There’s a Twittear.com, described in Spanish as “a place where people can meet and leave their ‘twitts.’ ”

The cultural mashup dictionary kicked off earlier this month with the etymology of the term 1.5 generation. Have suggestion for an entry? Feel free to post it below.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Cultural mashup dictionary, Facebook, Feisbuk, Google, Googlear, Language, Social media, Twittear, Twitter
April 13, 2011 | 8:01 AM | By

The cultural mashup dictionary: Googlear

Photo by TexasT

Thank you, News Taco, for calling to mind a term that merits a place in the evolving cultural mashup dictionary: Googlear.

Yesterday the website published a brief post on a report from ClickZ, which provides marketing news, on the Google search habits of Latinos. I’d seen the report earlier and it’s interesting in itself: Among other things, 93 percent of Latinos use Google for searches, 80 percent of Spanish keyword searches come from the search engine’s English interface (which likely means that bilingual Latinos are searching the English interface), and Latinos are big smartphone users, with a greater tendency to use cell phones in their searches than the general market.

But back to the term “googlear,” which the post featured prominently in a graphic. I say this all the time without thinking about it. It’s not just any neologism but a double one, a new term coined from another new term. Here is the sort-of official definition of googlear from Wikipedia:

Googlear (guglear o googlear) es un neologismo que es cada vez más corriente entre los usuarios de internet que utilizan el buscador Google.

Translated into English:

Googlear (guglear or googlear) is a neologism that is ever more common among Internet users who use the search engine Google.

The name of the search engine officially became a verb, as in “to google,” in 2006, when it was added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary.

There will be more entries of this ilk, such as “twittear.” In the meantime, if you have a suggestion, feel free to post it below.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Economy, ClickZ, Cultural mashup dictionary, Google, Googlear, Language, News Taco, Twittear