further Moment of Zen #16 (for August 4, 2009)

Duden saw Twitter

It is official.
Twitter has just got it.
Now “to twitter” (or simply German: “twittern”) is an officially accredited word like ”to breath”, “to eat” or “to sleep” – for many people it might be similarly important.
The “Duden” (which is the most common encyclopedia in Germany in a long tradition) admitted Twitter to join his new edition (25. Auflage, Juli 2009).
Therewith it became as popular as Google, which is (“to google” / “googeln”) in the Duden since 2006. And if you compare both of them – on the one hand the big, huge, always consulted by the whole international public web crawler Google and on the other hand this Cell-Phone-service – Twitter must be used very often to owe such a privilege.

With “twittern” a lot of other web-based-vocabulary got into the Duden like:

"Blogosphäre, Blu-Ray, Buschfunk, Datenklau, DAU, Entpacken, Handy-TV, Internetaffin, Internetfernsehen, Nickname, Onlinedurchsuchung, Vorratsdatenspeicherung, Web 2.0, Wiki"

But quite “normal” / interesting words as well like:

"Ehrenmord, Ersti, Fernbeziehung, Frauenversteher, Heizpilz, Hüftgold, It-Girl, Komasaufen, Konjunkturpaket, Mehrgenerationenhaus, Produktpiraterie, Sommermärchen, Stockbrot, Vorglühen"

Twitter is arising. Get used to it.



References:
DUDEN: die deutsche Rechtschreibung. Band 1. 24. Auflage, Mannheim, August 2006. Page 463.
http://www.duden.de
http://www.duden.de/presse/detail.php?id=871