MC102: American Dialect Society



			*Week 1: Introduction • Lecture notes • Reading room* •**
	The American Dialect Society			The American Dialect Society's newly chosen words of the year, decade, century and millennium were selected as the society met at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago on January 7, 2000, during its annual meeting. About 70 members and friends of the Society were present to discuss and vote on nominees selected earlier in the day. Word of the Year 1999 was Y2K. Word of the 1990s Decade was web. Word of the Twentieth Century was jazz. Word of the Past Millennium was she. Yes, she, the feminine pronoun. Before the year 1000, there was no she in English; just heo, which also meant they. But thanks either to the Viking invasions or some other obscure reason, women got a pronoun of their own in the second millennium. By a runoff vote of 35 to 27, she edged out science as Word of the Millennium. The information above was taken from the American Dialect Society web site. The American Dialect Society is a scholarly society devoted to the study of the English language in North America. Visit the American Dialect Society web site to find out what words the society voted as the most useful, most unnecessary, and most likely to succeed.
		The American Dialect Society met in Chicago in January 2000 and voted , among other things, on the word of the year, decade, century and millennium.
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