Languages ​​| “Le flygskam”, “Zeitenwende” and “air conditioning glue button” – the words of 2022 are insightful, but reflect dark times

In Finland, Kotus, or the Center for Domestic Languages, did not want to choose one word of the year. Instead, Kotus tends to publish dozens of word extracts throughout the year.

What the hell word of the year?

This is a question that is discussed at the end of the year in many language areas, at least in Europe and the Americas.

The words reflect the essence of the time. In 2020 and 2021, the listings featured a lot of vocabulary related to corona topics and the climate crisis.

And the tone hasn’t exactly brightened up. Vice versa. The year 2022 has been marked by Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine, which is reflected in the words of the year in the European language regions.

in Spain The Fundéu Foundation and the Royal Spanish Academy will announce their selection on Thursday, December 29, and the finalists have reached 12 words.

“Apocalypse” or apocalypse or, more commonly, just the end of the world, has arrived. You can even see pitch-black humor in the Spanish’s tongue-in-cheek banter.

“It is preferable to use the word apocalypse instead of armageddon,” Fundéu experts point out.

That is, if you have to go to perdition, then at least in the right language. People tend to take their mother tongue seriously, and that’s fine.

in Germany the word of the year is chosen by the state-funded language maintenance organization GfdS (Gesellschaft für Deutsche Sprache). Its choice this time was “Zeitenwende”, which means a significant turning point or, more literally, a change of era.

The word Zeitenwende was used by the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in his speech at the Bundestag in Berlin on February 27, i.e. three days after Russia invaded Ukraine.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Bundestag in Berlin on February 27.

“We have met Zeitenwenden“, Scholz said. “Basically, it’s about whether force can override justice.”

In his speech, Scholz promised one hundred billion euros in additional funding for the German defense forces, the Bundeswehr. The sum is massive, tens of billions of euros larger than the entire annual budget of the Finnish government.

In DenmarkKin the word of the year is related to war. The choice of the Language Council (Dansk Språgnævn) can be considered somewhat surprising: “Kyiv.”

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Kyiv means Kiev. It has undoubtedly been an important place in 2022, but that word of the year?

The solution is explained by the spelling. Previously, Kiev was “Kiev” in Danish, which adapted to Russian. Last year, the name was changed to the Ukrainian equivalent “Kyiv”.

A street musician drummed in snowy Kiev at the beginning of December.

“The fact that we in Denmark changed the spelling of the capital of Ukraine from Kiev to Kyiv showed respect for the Ukrainians – also in the language,” the jury reasoned to Danish Broadcasting According to DR.

Choosing the word of the year seems to be of interest to the general public in Denmark. Citizens are allowed to make suggestions to the language council, and DR said in mid-December that a total of 295 different words came to be evaluated by the jury.

All the noteworthy words are of course not related to the war, or are related to it at most in a roundabout way.

Norwegian The Language Council (Språkrådet) chose the word of the year as the economic word: “krympflasjon“. It refers to a form of inflation where the price of the product remains the same but the package size decreases.

“Krympflasjon” is the Norwegian version of the English word “shrinkflation”. Norwegians are more insightful than us Finnish speakers, who have started using the form “shrinkflation”.

This is intellectually lazy, because a more Finnish word would be easy to come up with, for example “contraction inflation” or “small inflation”.

In any case, the economic phenomenon in question is insidious. The manufacturers of products usually reduce their packaging quietly, so that consumers don’t just fall in love with the kind of withered packaging.

A Finnish grocery store in 2008, when the word “shrinkflation” was not yet known. The store in the picture is Siwa located on Helsinki’s Porvoonkatu, and the products were priced by store manager Anu Utriainen.

In all of them languages ​​do not choose a word of the year. For example, the Swedish language institute Isof (Institutet för språk och folkminnen) prefers to choose a set of words.

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“We don’t choose one word of the year, but we have a list of about 35 equivalent words,” says the language guardian Ola Karlsson From Isof. He says that this year’s list will be published To Isof’s website next Tuesday, December 27 at 8 a.m. Finnish time.

Interestingly enough, the Swedish word may still become the word of the year – although not in Sweden or Finland, but in French-speaking Belgium.

Belgian newspaper Le Soir and public radio of RTBF the word “flygskam” or flight shame, which has been borrowed into France as it is from Swedish, has made it to the ten finalists from the preliminary round. In French it is a masculine noun, so le flygskam.

The plane took off at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport in May 2006, when the word “flight shame” was not yet known.

The winning word for French speakers in Belgium will be announced in the Christmas break. It should be mentioned that the list also includes the inventive adjective “textoverti” (feminine “textovertie”), which would also work as a new education word in Finnish.

According to RTBF’s definition, the word Textvert refers to a person “who likes to communicate on a smartphone (and who in other communication situations may be reserved, even shy)”.

In Dutch In Belgium, the word of the year has already been chosen: “Climaatklever” i.e. “air conditioning glue”. The selection was made by representatives of the public broadcasting company VRT and editors of the Van Dale dictionary.

Climate gluer – which in Finnish could also be called “climate glue button” or in short “climate button” – means an activist who glues himself to something in order to get attention for his cause. Power glue is usually used to make removal as laborious as possible for the authorities.

Climate buttons have been seen in numerous European countries, including Britain, Holland, Italy and Germany. The bonding surfaces have been the walls of art museums, pavements of busy streets and airport runways.

Completely detached from the reality of war or the climate crisis is the choice of the British Oxford dictionary as the word of the year: “Goblin mode.” The selection was based on a public vote, in which more than 300,000 people participated.

There is no obvious translation for “Goblin mode”. “Hiisi mode” or “goblin mode” has been offered. If an initial chordal translation is preferred, then the “menninkä mode” will also work.

However, there is already an expression in the Finnish language that means much the same as “Goblin mode”. It’s about being like Ellu’s chickens.

There are actually more English words of the year. The American Merriam-Webster dictionary has also chosen its own. It is “gaslighting” i.e. “gas exposure”, which refers to the manipulation of another person’s mind.

Read more: The Oxford dictionary’s word of the year is “sleigh fashion”

How about Finland? What is the Finnish word of the year?

We operate in the same spirit as in Sweden, i.e. we do not choose a single word of the year. Instead, Kotus, or the center of native languages, publishes about the Finnish language word picks.

“This year too, instead of one word of the year, we actually chose about 70 words that have been featured in the media or social media over the course of the year,” says the dictionary editor. Ilona Paajanen.

“The word extracts already have a history of more than ten years. The wider word list includes the year’s events and trends more comprehensively – which the language immediately reflects with new words.”

Home the range of word selections is abundant, although the Russian war of aggression and its consequences are inevitably emphasized in Finland as well.

There is an “evacuation corridor”, a “gray period” and a “NATO pen”.

What the hell is a NATO pen?

Well, of course it’s “a certain type of ballpoint pen sold out in an instant, like the foreign minister Pekka Haavisto used when signing Finland’s NATO application”.

Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto’s hands and Finland’s NATO application in May 2022. Also in the picture is the famous “NATO pen”.

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