“Pandemic”, “confinement”, “covidiota” … and even “shit” are some of the words of the year chosen in different languages by different institutions in this 2020 in which the virus has fully impacted all aspects of our lives, including language.
The proof is that, unlike in previous years, in which the different words of the year covered a multitude of topics, this time almost all revolve around some aspect of the pandemic that we have been suffering for months.
“CROWN-PANDEMIC”, IN GERMAN
The institution that has the honor of having started this tradition in the 70s of the last century with its “Wort des Jahres” is the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache or German Language Academy, which this year has awarded the title to “Crown -pandemic “(‘coronavirus pandemic’).
In this line, without great surprises, some of the institutions that choose the word of the year in English have moved and both the Merriam-Webster dictionary and dictionary.com have opted for “pandemic” (‘pandemic’) .
The American Dialect Society, another of the classics of the words of the year, has preferred “covid,” a term that, they explain, “a year ago didn’t even exist and has come to define our lives in 2020.”
“CONFINITION”, “LOCKDOWN”, “ISO” …
In Spanish it is the Fundación de l’Espanyol Urgent, promoted by the EFE Agency and the RAE, which, since 2013, has awarded this recognition. This time the choice has been “confinement”, a term that alludes to a reality that we have suffered in one way or another around the world and the meaning has been updated this year by the Academy to adapt it to the new reality.
It coincides with the bet of another of the great English dictionaries, the Collins, which has chosen “lockdown”; while the National Dictionary Center of Australia has preferred ‘iso’, the shortening of ‘self-isolation’: ‘the act of staying on the sidelines of others as a form to limit the spread of an infectious disease ‘.
“COVIDIOT”
Still on that side of the world, the Macquarie dictionary, a reference to Australian English, usually chooses two words of the year: one selected by a committee of experts and another by the public. This year, for more variety, the choice has been further split: on the one hand the words related to the pandemic and on the other the “terms of the non-pandemic part of life.”
In the first group, experts have chosen ‘rona’, a shortening used in Australia for ‘coronavirus’, while the public has preferred ‘covidiot’ (‘covidiota’), in reference to those who ignore the warnings about public health or safety in the pandemic.
In the non-pandemic field, the ones chosen have been “doomscrolling”, a term difficult to translate into Spanish that alludes to the obsession with consuming news (usually bad), and “Karen”, a proper name that is uses in colloquial language to refer contemptuously to a certain type of woman (white, middle-aged, demanding, probably racist and anti-vaccine …).
“Anderhalvemetersamenleving”, the metro and a half company
Of particular interest is the double choice made this year by Van Dale, a publisher of dictionaries and courses in Dutch who chooses through his followers one word of the year for the Netherlands and another for the Flemish area of Belgium.
In the first case the winner is “anderhalvemetersamenleving”, which could be translated as ‘the society of the meter and a half (distance)’, a term used by the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, to define the type of relationship in spaces and places of access to the public that society will have for the duration of the pandemic.
In the Flemish variant the word of the year is “knuffelcontact”, a kind of ‘companion of mimes (or hugs)’, a person, apart from any member of the family, with whom you can have physical contact close during the coronavirus crisis and that should be the same at all times to prevent contagion.
The kanji of the year is…
The foundation that regulates aptitude tests in Japanese also chooses a kanji (ideograms used in writing the Japanese language) representative of each year. This time the chosen one is “mitsu”, which alone means “full of people” or “near” and has become popular in a new expression coined in times of pandemic: “of the 3 mitsu” (or “the 3Cs”) referred to “confined spaces”, “crowded places” and “close contact environments” which, according to the authorities, should be avoided so as not to spread the contagion.
An unprecedented year
That 2020 has been a peculiar and difficult year seems obvious. So much so that Oxford University Press, which has been choosing the most recognized word of the year in English since 2004, has given up doing so this year. Or rather he has decided to reorient his choice.
On their website they explain that “2020 is not a year that can be accommodated in a single word of the year”, so they have preferred to report more fully on the phenomenal breadth of language change and development during the year ”in a report called“ Words of an Unprecedented Year ”.
It analyzes the evolution of voices such as “covid-19”, “lockdown” (‘confinement’), ‘social distancing’ or ‘reopening’, but also ‘bushfire’. (‘forest fires’) or ‘Black Lives Matter’ (‘Black Lives Matter’).
A year of shit
Already on the margins of linguistic considerations, the readers of the British newspaper The Guardian were very clear and, when asked what was for them the word that best defines this 2020, they replied with a resounding “shit” ( ‘shit’).
In case it hadn’t been clear, in second place he was “fucked” and in the third “exhausting”. A not very elegant trio, but with which it is not difficult to form a fairly accurate definition of what, for many, has been the year ending today.