And Then They Took Away Our Words...

Hello again ATS!

A little while ago I was sitting here, scouring the Associated Press raw feed for news on a story that I am sure all of ATS is keenly aware of ( I'll give you a clue – it contains the words “North” and “Korea” ) - when I came across a story that literally left my jaw agape and my mind-numbed...

For all that we've seen from TPTB, this takes the cake. They want our money, guns, rights, freedoms, security, sanity.... But now they've come for our words.

That's right. Forget that they spend a great deal of money ( advertising ) teaching us what they want us to say... now they are using their money and muscle to tell us what we cannot say! I'm not talking about slander, or sedition, or virtriol. I'm talking about a simple word...

Ungoogleable.

You see, in Sweden a colloquialism evolved. A term to say “Something that you cannot find via an Internet search engine”. That word is ogooglebar, or, in English, ungoogleable. It is a very common sense phrase IMO... Dad how can I tell if Suzy likes me or not?... Well son, that is definitely ungoogleable. Let me explain it....

Sweden has a pretty cool thing, I have learned this morning, called The Swedish Language Council – the best way I can describe it is to defer to the Wiki:

The Swedish Language Council (Swedish: Språkrådet) is the primary regulatory body for the advancement and cultivation of the Swedish language. The council is partially funded by the Swedish government and has semi-official status. The council asserts control over the language through the publication of various books with recommendations in spelling and grammar as well as books on linguistics intended for a general audience, the sales of which are used to fund its operation. The council also works with the five official minority languages in Sweden: Finnish, Meänkieli, Yiddish, Romani and Sami alongside the Swedish Sign Language.

The Swedish Language Council comprises other organizations with an interest in the Swedish language, like the Swedish Academy and the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation. A number of organizations representing journalists, teachers, writers, actors and translators are also included.
The council has been publishing the quarterly journal Språkvård (lit. "Language care") since 1965, which publishes articles about the use and development of the Swedish language, readers' answers about spelling and grammar as well as providing guidelines for the use of Swedish in various contexts. It currently has over 6,500 subscribers.

To me this is an awesome idea! A entity that is dedicated to allowing a language to organically evolve and to keep track of that evolution so that writers and students don't get bogged down in archaic rules and styles that can cause communications difficulties later on. It makes perfect sense to me.
But, apparently, not to the Google...

STOCKHOLM (AP) -- Sweden's language watchdog has accused Google of trying to control the Swedish language in a dispute over the definition of the colloquial term "ungoogleable."

The Swedish version of the word - "ogooglebar" - made the Language Council of Sweden's 2012 list of words that aren't in the Swedish dictionary but have entered common parlance. The council defined it as something "that cannot be found on the Web with a search engine."

But Google objected, asking for changes showing the expression specifically refers to Google searches and a disclaimer saying Google is a registered trademark, the council said Tuesday.

Source

The council angrily caved in and removed the word from their list. Sad.

To me this isn't just a stupid business move ( There is no such thing as bad publicity – Coke and Band Aid seem pretty happy that they've become generic terms for their products... ) but it is beyond reprehensible and an absolutely vulgar display of greed and irrational control for Google to take this stance.

Thou shalt not take the Googles name in vain...

If this is not proof that Governments are no longer controlling the world, but that Corporations are – I don't know what is. I am accustomed to businesses telling me what they want me to say ( advertising ) but for them to tell me what I cannot say???

Once upon a time it was the Church that held the power to control what words came out of the lips of men and women. Now, apparently, it's Google. Absolutely amazing.

What say you ATS? Am I overreacting or is this what I see it as – something that would make even Orwell flinch in his grave? Is this as outrageous to you as it is to me?

Imagine a brave new world where one might find themselves in a prison camp – there only crime? Saying that something was ungoogleable.

Oh, Google – this thread is not ogooglebar – so I hope somebody with a brain, from your organization, reads it and sees the writing on the wall. You think yourselves invincible and indispensable.. but so did AOL, Compuserve, Netscape, Myspace, and countless others. I would strongly suggest reevaluating your approach to the masses – because the cyber community doesn't like these types of shenanigans. Not one bit.

~Heff

reply to post by Hefficide


Corporations now begin to dictate the language! This is one of the many reasons why i am so much against private ownership. It is one thing to own your own house, farm and small business. Its a total different thing to be a large corporation to dictate trends and control a market.

I don't think you are overreacting at all. Things are going too far. Does this mean then that they are going to go after the math books and remove the idea of google since they have monopolized the use of the word? I remember a rather fun lesson about it back in the 4th grade. Are they only upset because it was used in the negative?

I don't think Sweden should have caved in, since when do major corporations dictate policy to national governments? Oh nevermind maybe they are taking a page from the Gates' with their grand scheme with our kids education. You are so right, Orwell has probably widened his grave by inches from rolling around so much.
Good morning and thanks for the heads up.

First they came for ungoogleable and I said nothing.

But I will be damned if they come for my googly-eyes!

Googly eyes or jiggly eyes are small plastic craft supplies used to imitate eyeballs. Googly eyes traditionally are composed of a clear, hard-plastic shell, with a smaller, black plastic disk trapped within.

This is just stupid! I always laugh when I see people say that socialism is coming to destroy America if we're not careful.

What they don't realize is that fascism is already here and they never seen it coming.

Wait until Google has the inevitable hiccup and files for bankruptcy protection. Too big to fail ring any bells? All that info and internet traffic will be under government control. It could happen. It probably will if it fits their agenda.

Nothing is ungooglebar,

you can come up with anything on google to support an argument.

Even compete nonsense.

Originally posted by sheepslayer247
First they came for ungoogleable and I said nothing.

But I will be damned if they come for my googly-eyes!

Googly eyes or jiggly eyes are small plastic craft supplies used to imitate eyeballs. Googly eyes traditionally are composed of a clear, hard-plastic shell, with a smaller, black plastic disk trapped within.

This is just stupid! I always laugh when I see people say that socialism is coming to destroy America if we're not careful.

What they don't realize is that fascism is already here and they never seen it coming.

Now reading this I am reminded on an article I read way back in the 80's when "PC" began to make inroads. The author warned of a mutated language and veiled messages that would remain to be interpreted at will. The inability for us to communicate true intentions. Not technical and scientific themes as such, but our emotions and interpersonal desires and intentions.
I guess it would be nice now if we begin to band together and begin really to remove the $$$ from these corporations. Personally I do this already that each time someone wants to meet me at some "Starbucks" or similar coffee house to discuss business, - always a a "I meet you 1/2 way between your and my location.." scenario - that I simply redirect the place of meeting to the nearest "Mom & Pop" coffee shop. Maybe it's a drop in the bucket. But simply a "go where they know your face and name" mentality that I care to keep alive.

reply to post by Theflyingweldsman


See! You've got common sense! Google had a brilliant marketing gimmick land right in their lap and instead of capitalizing on it with viral marketing? They went all Captain Oligarchy and burned themselves. Absolutely incredible that this played out the way it did.

reply to post by Hefficide


This strikes right at the heart of the current copyright and internet freedom discussion.

I am a firm believer that you cannot copyright the sky, or trees, or a mountain. They are part of our daily landscape. They pervade our reality and are always there, front and center. Who invented them is immaterial to the fact that they represent our environment, the world we live in, our reality.

The same can be said of the Nike swoosh. Or the Happy Birthday song. And I would posit that Google has now found itself in that same category (what with all the Googlecars driving around taking photos of my house).

I am ashamed that we have painted ourselves into this corner as a civilization. Next thing you know, the oil companies will try to tax us on the air we breathe, since they are regulated to help clean it up.

reply to post by Hefficide


I think this is classic SKUB mentality.

Get everyone fighting and talking about it.

voilà.

Viral marketing without all the expense

Tfw.

Wasn't googles motto, "Don't be evil" or something like that?

The next thing you know,the will get rid of this super-secret code word from Mary Poppins................

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

When that happens,the end of times is nigh.

This is ridiculous, shouldn't Google be happy about all of the free advertising it gets when its search engine is turned into a verb and then an adjective? Poor business decisions - and I thought people were learning.

Just one step closer to Newspeak, Heff...


FForward to 2:30 onward.

What google has done is "ungood".

Simple solution here, spell it "ungoogolable". The word googol means a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery large number. It is NOT trademarked, and does NOT belong to Google (in fact Google is actually named after that, they just changed the spelling to make it trademark-able).

So, play their same game against them...and when you can't find it in a search engine, it must be ungoogolable.

Definition of googol

Goodthink on the double-plus-good side Heff... while the Swedes are busy making up new slang words... the rest of the world is busily learning English as a second language. The English language hegemony will continue to prevail over the next few centuries and slowly but surely will pick up new phonemes from China, S.A., India, etc. A new global language ought rightly to develop at these constant rates of globalization.

Richard Nixon tells us the sad story about his Quaker grandmother who spoke in 'plain-speak' and how that way of speaking basically died out - except within those tiny, well-insulated and self segregating neo-primitive societies, e.g. Examples in No. America include the Quakers the Amish; I'm sure there are other examples 'round the world.

Here is Nixon's quote:

NIXON: Another thing that was interesting about her -- my grandmother always addressed us with what we call -- we Quakers call -- the "plain speech". She wouldn't say, "Are you going?" She says, "Richard, is thee going?" and "Is this thine?" She did that with everybody she met, including people that were strangers. Then in the next generation my mother with her sisters always broke into the plain speech whenever they were talking on telephone. It was always very interesting to me to hear them say -- she'd say, "Martha," or "Jane," or whatever sister might be calling, "I just thought that this thing of mine was very good", and so forth and so on. And then we got down to our generation, and we didn't use it at all. My mother, for example, never used the plain speech with her children. She did with her sisters, and, of course, my grandmother with everybody. So, it seems like a nothing thing at the moment, but it is a pleasant memory now. Source www.libs.uga.edu...

Our human history is already littered with dead languages, languages that are not taught natively. If a language refuses to evolve then it will most certainly die. In two hundred years (or more) what we post on ATS might be seen as dead language...

I just don't know how any language can survive the next 200 years given the strong influence of globalization... our future language might end up looking like a matrix... like this

reply to post by SayonaraJupiter



My family has intermarried with all manner of hispanic folks (the latina is among the most gorgeous of Gods creatures). My wife (who is hispanic) and I have often noted that it takes 3 generations to lose the culture. She is the second generation here. Our kids don't speak spanish, although we both do (i am so white I can tend toward pink, LOL).

I know many who are here both legally and not quite so legally. It seems that the third generation guideline holds true with them as well.

My mom was the third generation hungarian. She doesn't speak any hungarian, but my grandfather did.

ETA: for whatever reason, there are far less spanish only speakers than when I was a kid. I learned spanish out of necessity growing up. It is very rare to see someone who doesn't speak english nowadays. Not sure if that is just in this small stretch of the border, or elsewhere too. and not sure what could be driving it.

reply to post by Hefficide


This is un-Bing-lievable!



Seriously though, we live in a culture now where many words are taboo.

(I'd make a list, but I'm not allowed)

Originally posted by beezzer
reply to post by Hefficide

 

This is un-Bing-lievable!

Seriously though, we live in a culture now where many words are taboo.

(I'd make a list, but I'm not allowed)

What a "Beezzer-ific" idea!