Tokyo 2020 Top Partners Vs. Ambushers Arranged Side-by-Side
Tokyo 2020 Olympics Top Partners and Ambushers
Global Language Monitor
The Tokyo Olympics have encountered a host of problems, most of them outside their control. They certainly do not want to be the first Olympics where the Ambushers actually outscored the IOC.”
— Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of GLM.
AUSTIN, TEXAS, UNITEDSTATES, August 9, 2021 — To the Global Marketing community, the ultimate Olympic race is that between the Olympic Top Partners The Global Language Monitor (GLM) has released the Official Ambush Marketing Rankings for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics found that the Top Olympic Partners and their ambushers are virtually tied according to their Brand Affiliation Index (BAI) scores. At stake is pride and, of course, tens of billions of dollars in advertising and marketing expenditures that will be allotted for the next several years to the winners.
For comparison purposes, GLM created the Economic Value Unit (EVU) that estimates in dollar terms the size of the value leak for each of the Top Partners during the current quadrennial. In like manner, it estimates the value gained by the NAMs or Ambush Marketers.
“This is the closest race since GLM has been tracking the numbers since the Beijing Games in 2008”, said Paul JJ Payack.. “The Tokyo Olympics have encountered a host of problems, most of them outside of their control. However, they certainly do not want to be the first Olympics where the Ambushers actually outscored the IOC.”
According to the latest numbers, the mean score for The Top Olympic Partners was 71.43 BAI against a 69.94 BAI for the Non-Affiliated Marketers (NAMs). The final numbers will be announced on Saturday, August 14th.
The Top Olympic Partners for Tokyo 2020 follow:
Aliba
Airbnb.
Atos.
Bridgestone.
Coca-Cola.
Dow.
General Electric.
Intel.
Panasonic.
Procter & Gamble.
Samsung Electronics.
Swatch Group (Omega, Tissot).
Toyota
Visa
The Global Language Monitor’s (GLM) Brand Affiliation Index (BAI), is a proprietary, longitudinal study that analyzes the global association between (and among) individual brands and their competitors or, in this case, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The Global Language Monitor measured several dozen factors in the study, closely examining all marketing movements extending from London 2012 to Tokyo 2020. GLM has been tracking the Olympics in this manner since the Beijing Summer Games (2008).
Though official numbers are never released, each Top Partner is believed to pays some 100 million USD to the IOC for the privilege. GLM has found that the actual number is closer to 1,000,000,000 USD for each Olympiad, fully loaded. This includes indirect costs associated with the sponsorship such as an apparently endless number of activities, contests, promotional items, and events.
Earlier in 2020 GLM found that the Tokyo 2020 Games had themselves been ambushed by the coronavirus with a remarkable 92.8% correlation to the ongoing Pandemic.
Over the years we’ve met some unlikely ambushers from cartoon characters (Beijing 2008, Kung-fu Panda) to world leaders on the brink of nuclear war (PyeongChang 2018, Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump) but never did we imagine being ambushed by a raging pandemic,” said Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst for the Global Language Monitor.
The study pulls data from hundreds of millions of data points from across the internet and the top 380,000 print, electronic news media outlets, and social networking sites, analyzing sentiment, context, and several other factors to determine which Olympic Top Partners are most closely associated with the Olympic Games — and which brands are being closely associated with the coronavirus pandemic or both. The complete findings are published in the Tokyo 2020 Ambush Marketing Report, which is now available for order.
Going a step further, the GLM study also includes an analysis on how closely brands and a number of their competitors are being affected by the coronavirus, which has been a global concern in the lead-up to the Tokyo Games. “We actually found a remarkable correlation between the coronavirus and the Worldwide Olympic Partners,” Payack continued. “A number of the Brands (and ambushers), actually had nearly as many citations linked to the coronavirus as to the Games themselves. In a few cases, citations to the coronavirus actually exceeded those to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.”
Early this year, the IOC Executive Board expressed its full commitment to the Tokyo Games, scheduled to take place from July 23 to August 8, reporting that all protective measures are being taken to address the coronavirus situation. Lately, the IOC banned all non-athletic visitors from the Games. This situation has steadily deteriorated.
About Global Language Monitor
Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor collectively documents,
analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, emphasizing the Global English language. GLM is known for its Words of the Year, political analysis, college and university rankings, high-tech buzzwords, and the Top Global Fashion Capitals, as well as major global sports events.
For more information, visit Languagemonitor.com.
Media Contact:
Paul JJ Payack
Global Language Monitor
+1 737-215-7750 PJJP@Post.Harvard.edu
This is Global Language Monitor’s Eighth Consecutive Olympic Ambush Marketing Rankings.
AUSTIN, TX, UNITEDSTATES, August 4, 2021 — The Global Language Monitor (GLM) has released the Official Ambush Marketing Rankings for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. GLM has found that the Top Olympic Partners and their ambushers are virtually tied according to their Brand Affiliation Index (BAI) scores.
The Top Olympic Partners for Tokyo 2020 follow:
Alibaba
Airbnb.
Atos.
Bridgestone.
Coca-Cola.
Dow.
General Electric.
Intel.
Panasonic.
Procter & Gamble.
Samsung Electronics.
Swatch Group (Omega, Tissot).
Toyota
Visa
GLM’s research has identified the top ambush marketers for each of the Tokyo 2020 Top Partners; many of these, of course, carry over from one Olympiad to the next.
According to the latest numbers, the mean score for The Top Olympic Partners was 71.43 BAI against 69.94 score for the Non-affiliated Marketers. This means that the Non-affiliated Marketers are reaping nearly the same economic benefit despite their lack of official association with the Olympic Games.
The first chart shows each Top Partner with ‘Non-affiliated Marketers’ (NAMs) or ambushers. The second chart shows both Partners and Ambushers in a single, combined ranking.
The Global Language Monitor’s Brand Affiliation Index (BAI), is a proprietary, longitudinal study that analyzes the global association between (and among) individual brands and their competitors or, in this case, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. In the study, The Global Language Monitor measured several dozen factors, closely examining all marketing movements extending from London 2012 to Tokyo 2020. GLM has been tracking the Olympic Partners since the Beijing Summer Games (2008).
“We’ve met unlikely ambushers from cartoon characters (Beijing 2008, Kung-fu Panda) to world leaders on the brink of war (PyeongChang 2018, Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump) but never a raging pandemic.
— Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of GLM.
Though official numbers are never released, each Top Partner is believed to pay some 100 million USD for the privilege. GLM has found that the actual number is closer to 1,000,000,000 USD for each Olympiad, fully loaded. This includes indirect costs associated with the sponsorship such as an apparently endless number of activities, contests, promotional items, and events.
Of course, in 2020 GLM found that the Tokyo 2020 Games had themselves been ambushed by the coronavirus with a remarkable 92.8% correlation to the ongoing Pandemic.
This is up some eight percentage points from a year ago when the Games were first postponed. This means that in GLM’s global research data, out of every 100 references to the 2020 Summer Games, more some 92 now contained a reference to the coronavirus and/or COVID-19.
For comparison purposes, GLM created the Economic Value Unit (EVU) that estimates in dollar terms the size of the value leak for each of the TOP Sponsors during the current quadrennial. In like manner, it estimates the value gained by the NAMs or Ambush Marketers.
The study pulls data from hundreds of millions of data points from across the internet and the top 380,000 print, electronic news media outlets, and social networking sites, analyzing sentiment, context and a host of other factors to determine which Worldwide Olympic Partners are most closely associated with the Olympic Games, and which brands are being closely associated with the coronavirus pandemic or both. The findings are published in the Tokyo 2020 Ambush Marketing Report, which is now available for order. (See below.)
Going a step further, the GLM study also includes an analysis on how closely brands and a number of their ‘ambush’ competitors are being affected by the coronavirus, which has been a global concern in the lead up to the Tokyo Games.
“We actually found a remarkable correlation between the coronavirus and the Worldwide Olympic Partners,” Payack continued. “A number of the Brands (and ambushers), actually had nearly as many citations linked to the coronavirus as to the Games themselves. In a few cases, citations to the coronavirus actually exceeded those to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.”
Early this year, the IOC Executive Board expressed its full commitment to the Tokyo Games, scheduled to take place from July 23 to August 8, reporting that all protective measures are being taken to address the coronavirus situation. Lately, they banned all non-athletic visitors from the Games. This situation has steadily deteriorated.
About Global Language Monitor
Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language. The company is known for its Words of the Year, political analysis, college and university rankings, high-tech buzzwords, and media analytics, and the Top Global Fashion Capitals.
The Global Language Monitor Has Released the Official Ambush Marketing Rankings for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics
This is Global Language Monitor’s Eighth Consecutive Olympic Ambush Marketing Rankings.
AUSTIN, TX, UNITEDSTATES, August 4, 2021 — The Global Language Monitor (GLM) has released the Official Ambush Marketing Rankings for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. GLM has found that the Top Olympic Partners and their ambushers are virtually tied according to their Brand Affiliation Index (BAI) scores.
The Top Olympic Partners for Tokyo 2020 follow:
Aliba
Airbnb.
Atos.
Bridgestone.
Coca-Cola.
Dow.
General Electric.
Intel.
Panasonic.
Procter & Gamble.
Samsung Electronics.
Swatch Group (Omega, Tissot).
Toyota &
Visa
GLM’s research has identified the top ambush marketers for each of the Tokyo 2020 Top Partners; many of these, of course, carry over from one Olympiad to the next.
According to the latest numbers, the mean score for The Top Olympic Partners was 71.43 BAI against 69.94 score for the Non-affiliated Marketers. This means that the Non-affiliated Marketers are reaping nearly the same economic benefit despite their lack of official association with the Olympic Games.
The first chart shows each Top Partner with ‘Non-affiliated Marketers’ (NAMs) or ambushers. The second chart shows both Partners and Ambushers in a single, combined ranking.
The Global Language Monitor’s Brand Affiliation Index (BAI), is a proprietary, longitudinal study that analyzes the global association between (and among) individual brands and their competitors or, in this case, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. In the study, The Global Language Monitor measured several dozen factors, closely examining all marketing movements extending from London 2012 to Tokyo 2020. GLM has been tracking the Olympic Partners since the Beijing Summer Games (2008).
“We’ve met unlikely ambushers from cartoon characters (Beijing 2008, Kung-fu Panda) to world leaders on the brink of war (PyeongChang 2018, Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump) but never a raging pandemic”, said Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of GLM.
Though official numbers are never released, each Top Partner is believed to pay some 100 million USD for the privilege. GLM has found that the actual number is closer to 1,000,000,000 USD for each Olympiad, fully loaded. This includes indirect costs associated with the sponsorship such as an apparently endless number of activities, contests, promotional items, and events.
Of course, in 2020 GLM found that the Tokyo 2020 Games had themselves been ambushed by the coronavirus with a remarkable 92.8% correlation to the ongoing Pandemic.
This is up some eight percentage points from a year ago when the Games were first postponed. This means that in GLM’s global research data, out of every 100 references to the 2020 Summer Games, more some 92 now contained a reference to the coronavirus and/or COVID-19.
For comparison purposes, GLM created the Economic Value Unit (EVU) that estimates in dollar terms the size of the value leak for each of the TOP Sponsors during the current quadrennial. In like manner, it estimates the value gained by the NAMs or Ambush Marketers.
The study pulls data from hundreds of millions of data points from across the internet and the top 380,000 print, electronic news media outlets, and social networking sites, analyzing sentiment, context and a host of other factors to determine which Worldwide Olympic Partners are most closely associated with the Olympic Games, and which brands are being closely associated with the coronavirus pandemic or both. The findings are published in the Tokyo 2020 Ambush Marketing Report, which is now available for order. (See below.)
Going a step further, the GLM study also includes an analysis on how closely brands and a number of their ‘ambush’ competitors are being affected by the coronavirus, which has been a global concern in the lead up to the Tokyo Games.
“We actually found a remarkable correlation between the coronavirus and the Worldwide Olympic Partners,” Payack continued. “A number of the Brands (and ambushers), actually had nearly as many citations linked to the coronavirus as to the Games themselves. In a few cases, citations to the coronavirus actually exceeded those to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.”
Early this year, the IOC Executive Board expressed its full commitment to the Tokyo Games, scheduled to take place from July 23 to August 8, reporting that all protective measures are being taken to address the coronavirus situation. Lately, they banned all non-athletic visitors from the Games. This situation has steadily deteriorated.
About Global Language Monitor
Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language. The company is known for its Words of the Year, political analysis, college and university rankings, high-tech buzzwords, and media analytics, and the Top Global Fashion Capitals.
Austin, Texas, December 2017. If you kept abreast of the daily press reports, you would think an outbreak of mass hysteria or at least amnesia had swept over the nations of the West. The world’s leading print and electronic media acted as if the concept of truth had been circumvented, or even, contravened, and sounded alarm after alarm that what we all knew as facts were no longer discernible. The source of this disruption in the news cycle, of course, was what came to be known as fake news and post-truth.
For historical comparisons of a number of the terms used in this analysis, GLM used the Google Ngram Viewer. You can use the Ngram Viewer to chart frequencies of comma-delimited search strings. The Google Ngram Viewer uses yearly counts from sources printed between 1500 and 2008, though in some cases later dates of publications are included.
In the first example, frequencies of citations between and among a number of words used to describe the Top Words of the Year for 2016 are plotted between 1940 and the present.
Figure 1. Relative Frequency of citations among words used to describe the Top Words of the Year for 2016
Figure 2. Close-up on Relative Frequency Among Some Top Words of the Year for 2016
Figure 3. Comparisons of the Words Truth Vs. Lie Since 1740
This is why early in the century, the Global Language Monitor put into place a methodology that clearly states that each considered word or phrase must adhere to the published criteria (see below). The methodology calls for words and phrases from the entire global English linguasphere to be considered, as well as each fulfilling geographic and demographic requirements. This automatically excludes the lists created by those organizations that rely on polls and other such non-scientific tools
A Methodology Optimized for the Wired World -- GLM’s Word of the Year rankings are based upon actual word usage
throughout the English-speaking world, which now approaches some 2.38 billion people, who use the language
as a first, second, business language. To qualify for these lists, the words, names, and phrases must meet
three criteria: 1) found globally, 2) have a minimum of 25,000 citations, and 3) have the requisite ‘depth’
and ‘breadth’ of usage. Depth is here defined as appearing in various forms of media; breadth that they must
appear world-over, not limited to a particular profession or social group or geography. The goal is to find
the word usage that will endure the test of time.
Global Language Monitor began to use newly available technologies to document the Words of the Year for Global English at the turn of the 21st century, with the idea to encapsulate and capture the essence of the preceding twelve months in a sort of linguistic amber.
Consider for a moment that fact that in 2009 GLM named ‘twitter’ as the Global English Word of the Year, not only as a social media phenomenon but as a potential Weapon of Mass Disruption (or even destruction). Witness: 1) the Arab Spring and 2) the actions of one Donald J. Trump.
Political Correctness
In a time so debilitated by the specter of political correctness (both from the left and the right), it seems rather demeaning to advance the concept of ‘fake news’, once you study its etymology, tracing back the origins of the word ‘fake’.
Cambridge Dictionaries’ definition of fakir: A Muslim (or, loosely, a Hindu) religious ascetic who lives solely on alms. Origin: Early 17th century: via French from Arabic faqīr. Fakir, Arabic Faqīr (“poor”), originally, a mendicant dervish. In mystical usage, the word fakir refers to man’s spiritual need for God, who alone is self-sufficient. Although of Muslim origin, the term has come to be applied in India to Hindus as well.
Fakirs are generally regarded as holy men who are possessed of miraculous powers, such as the ability to walk on fire or to subsist by looking only at the face of God.
In a Languagelog posting by Mark Liberman, How Fakirs Became Fakers, Edmund Wilson comments (from the grave) that Fakirs began to become entwined with fakers with a common usage that arose out of the American spiritualism craze of the 19th century. This is where one can witness the shift in meaning for the word fakir, from an Islamic religious ascetic to the Hindu “Yogi,” to a sort of street corner or carnival barker or “producer of illusions”.
In other words ‘fake news” joins a long list of ethnic slurs that have imbued American English since before the founding of the republic. They are too many to repeat. However the most common of these might be ‘ethnic-group’ giver’ or ‘ethnic-group rich’. Specifically, using the term fake news could be said to humiliate and/or cast aspersions upon Muslim and/or Hindu holy men. Recent searches of the New York Times found 869 instances of ‘fake news,’ while searches of The Washington Post found 1,352. None mentioned the historical dubiousness of the practice.
You can see this linguistic shift peaking around 1940 and continuing to this day.
Figure 4. Shift in Meaning Between Fakir and Faker During the 1940s
In retrospective, even the whole idea of fake news and post-truth is a bit of an over-reaction. The organizations that were disrupted the most by the appearance of unchecked, non-verifiable and inadequately sourced stories, were those upon which the world came to rely and depend upon to safeguard the information delivered to their audiences as verifiably true. To continue in these roles as stewards of truth, it was incumbent upon them to put into place new methods of testing information.
The unvarnished truth is that the dominant news gathering and distribution organizations fell behind the curve as sources of information multiplied by orders of magnitude. Neither did they comprehend the astonishingly rapid advances in computing power. Finally, the evolution of communication and social media tools advanced far more quickly than the old line media’s ability to adapt to and absorb them.
Decades of reporting on the decline of the US manufacturing base never seemed to register to old media as applicable lessons for themselves. In the mid-’80s, an HBS case study inquired as to which fared better — companies with strategic plans in place or those that had none. The answer: a dead heat. Apparently, companies without strategic plans were able to adjust more quickly to changing market conditions while companies with strategic plans all too often, steadfastly rode these plans straight into oblivion. (For more information on this phenomenon, check out the first two editions of In Search of Excellence. Prepare to be shocked.)
What is Truth?
The debate over what is truth has been ongoing since the search for an ‘honest man’ by Diogenes the Cynic, the dialogues of Socrates as recorded by Plato, the rhetorical question Pontius Pilate asked of the Christ, the Confessions of Augustine, the Summa of Aquinas, and the monastic scriptoria of Medieval Europe.
In the scriptoria of the Middle Ages, an elaborate system was constructed to ensure that no discrepancies were introduced into Scripture or highly-prized scholarly works — before the coming of movable type and the printing press. Can you imagine the decibel level of a discussion that played out over the misrepresentation of a single iota when dealing with the work of a Church Father, the Apostle Peter (or Paul), or the words of the Lord himself? This, of course, was complicated by the fact that there were few grammatical rules, little or no punctuation, no spaces between and among words, nor between sentences or paragraphs, and the like.
Even in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Harvard and Yale engaged in the same sort of tussle about the owner of Truth as the Right and Left are engaged in today. Harvard chose the Latin word Veritas (Truth) on its official seal, while Yale considered the matter closed by adding Lux et Veritas. (Light and Truth) to its own shield. Three hundred years later, in an academic world perhaps overly concerned with political correctness, Harvard won top honors for the Top Politically (in)Correct Word of 2016.
Watching the nightly news and reading the traditional (for the last two centuries, that is) media, one has the distinct sense that what they perceive as unprecedented almost chaotic circumstances is actually that of the normalcy of the new reality, that of communications at the speed of light that the internet has foisted upon us.
We keep hearing about this most unusual of election cycles, but this is only true when looking through the prism (and historical construct) of the traditional news gathering operations. What is called the 24-hour News Cycle is actually just the tip of the tsunami washing over the planet at an ever-quicker pace. Indeed, the nature of the beast hasn’t changed at all. It is our outdated techniques, that haven’t kept up with the new reality: News now emanates at the speed of thought, from tens of thousands or, even, millions of sources.
Can you imagine the uproar in the monastic world when documents would be produced with little or no vetting against the time-honored standards?
In 2008 GLM published an article, “Is Merriam-Webster its own Best Frenemy,” where we noted that its newest additions to its Collegiate Dictionary, were older than most entering college students at the time (28 years vs 18!) Indeed, for the most part, technology could solve most of the Post-truth and Fake News phenomena.
Since the turn of the 21st century, the Global Language Monitor (GLM) has named the Top Words of Global English. A decade earlier, the American Dialect Society began to name the Word of The Year for mostly American (and a bit of British) English with little or no use of the then emerging computer power. By the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, the BBC chose the Global Language Monitor to determine the Top English Words of the Decade worldwide while they chose an UK-based Linguist to highlight those of the UK.
One of the most surprising trends in the evolution of the Words of the Year over the last two decades is that they have become decidedly more parochial, and more trivial, as the century has progressed. Now there are about a dozen players, all competing for the same space, so the race has been one of dumbing down the various nominees and ultimate winner in an apparently desperate attempt to seek the lowest common denominator, or even worse, to optimize entertainment value.
Perhaps most surprising of all is the apparent lack of preparation by the venerable incumbent organizations responsible for gathering, sifting through, and certifying information that then qualifies as verifiably newsworthy.
Apocalyptic language has been widely cited as word of the year worthy for the last several years — and rightly so. In fact, Apocalypse and Armageddon took Global Language Monitors’ honors as Top Global English Words of 2012. And though GLM’s proprietary algorithms have displayed a predictive element, it’s entirely possible that Apocalyptic language did indeed peak some five years too soon.
About the Global Language Monitor
In 2003, The Global Language Monitor (GLM) was founded in Silicon Valley by Paul J.J. Payack on the understanding that new technologies and techniques were necessary for truly understanding the world of Big Data, as it is now known.
Today, from its home in Austin, Texas GLM provides a number of innovative products and services that utilize its ‘algorithmic services’ to help worldwide customers protect, defend and nurture their branded products and entities. Products include ‘brand audits’ to assess the current status, establish baselines, and competitive benchmarks for current intellectual assets and brands, and to defend products against ambush marketing.
These services are currently provided to the Fortune 500, the Higher Education market, high technology firms, the worldwide print, and electronic media, as well as the global fashion industry, among others.
For more information, call 1.512.801-6823, email info@LanguageMonitor.com, or visit www.LanguageMonitor.com.
The Global Language Monitor Announces that “Covid-19” is the Top Word, “Work at Home” the Top Phrase and “WHO” the Top Name of 2020 for the English Language Worldwide
The Global Language Monitor’s twenty-first consecutive global survey since the turn of the 21st century
Contact: Paul JJ Payack, +1.737.215.7750 or Email — Info@languagemonitor.com or PJJP@post.Harvard.edu
AUSTIN, Texas, January 3, 2021 — The Global Language Monitor (GLM), the data research company, announced that ‘Covid-19’ is the top word, “Work at Home” the top phrase and “WHO” the top name of 2020 for the English Language Worldwide.
The Top Ten Words of 2020 are Work at Home, WHO, Covid-19, Covid, MAGA, Coronavirus, Zoom, New Normal, The Virus and Trade War. These are followed by Black Lives Matter, Face mask, Corona, Progress, Truth, The Pandemic, Fake News, Sustainability, Donald Trump, Identity Politics, Climate Change, Essential Workers, Lockdown, Joe Biden, and Social Distancing. For details, see below.
Global Language Monitor (GLM) is the premier data research and media analytics company that documents, analyzes, and tracks trends in language usage worldwide.
Recently, the European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences has characterized the Global Language Monitor Word of the Year Project as ‘objectively providing’ a ‘picture of the world that helps one understand significant trends in the states of minds around the world … [through the detection of] the small changes in language that often presage titanic shifts in the way humans communicate”.
[Quote from Paul JJ Payack, president and chief work analyst for the Global Language Monitor. Payack is the founding president of both yourDictionary,com and the Global Language Monitor.]
“This Year of the Pandemic has provided a reset to most human activities, and the Word of the Year endeavor has not been immune to its influence and power. The key question is how do you measure the words to describe this global plague against all the others? Our answer is to simply record their impact, like any other, — 2020 was already a year of global upheaval. Indeed, the top pandemic-related words have scored the highest Narrative Tracker Values ever recorded since the very first days of this not-so-young century.”
For the year 2020, GLM took a snapshot of the global language picture some ninety days after the advent of the first national lockdowns, when governments began to recognize the severity of the oncoming pandemic. This current analysis not only details the top 50 words, phrases, and names but also shows the changes in the word rankings since those first lockdowns.
Biggest Movers Since Beginning of Pandemic
Gainers Percent Increase
WHO, up 31 %
Work-at-Home, up 56 %
MAGA. up 91 %
New Normal, up 47 %
The Virus. up94 %
The Top Words of the Year 2020 No, 1-25, along with definitions and past and current rankings, follows.
Top Words of 2020 for Worldwide English
Final
Word
Comment
Midyear
Change
1
Work at Home
The result of social distancing guidelines where employees must stay separated.
29
Up 28
2
WHO
WHO – The World Health Organization, the United Nations as the agency overseeing international public health.
35
Up 33
3
Covid-19
The official name of the disease caused by SARS CoV-2; named in WHO’s Int’l Classification of Diseases (ICD).
4
Covid
The shorthand for Covid-19.
1
-3
5
MAGA
Make America Great Again: 2016 Campaign slogan of President Trump.
38
Up 33
6
Coronavirus
Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Gamma: the four main groupings of coronaviruses. Alpha, \
3
-3
7
Zoom
Group meetings held over video conferencing channels.
15
Up 8
8
New Normal
Reality of the pandemic-ravaged world.
37
Up 29
9
The Virus
Shorthand for Covid-19.
28
Up 19
10
Trade War
The economic conflict between China and the US employing tariffs.
9
-1
11
Black Lives Matter
A movement protesting police brutality against African Americans.
32
Up 21
12
Face mask
Face covering that helps halt the spread of Covid-19 to varying degrees depending on fabric and number of layers.
5
-7
13
Corona
From the Latin for ‘crown’. Compare the Sun’s corona during a total eclipse.
4
-9
14
Progress
The concept that Humankind is on the inexorable course toward achieving greater economic and personal freedom.
6
-8
15
Truth
Being congruent with reality; real, genuine, conformable with the highest standard or quality.
7
-8
16
The Pandemic
The current global pandemic precipitated by SARS-CoV-2.
27
Up 11
17
Fake News
Packaged news, planted sources, one-sided exposes, party lines, and official narratives are new phenomena only to those with no sense of history.
38
Up 21
18
Sustainability
The ability to create an environment that supplies certain needs without compromising future production.
10
-8
19
Donald Trump
Donald J. Trump, the 46th, and current, president of the United States.
18
-1
20
Identity Politics
Politics based on individual characteristics, such as skin color or ethnic background, or gender.
13
-7
21
Climate Change
Climate change has ranked in the Top Ten for the last dozen years or so.
24
Up 3
22
Essential Workers
Workers whose jobs are important to the smooth running of a political entity, putting themselves at a higher risk of infection.
43
Up 21
23
Lockdown
Restricting movement outside homes for locales or geographic districts.
12
-11
24
Joe Biden
President-elect of the United States after defeating President Trump.
34
Up 10
25
Social Distancing
Distance individuals should keep from each other to lessen risk of virus transmission; a minimum of two meters.
Top Words Nos. 26-50 of 2020 for Worldwide English Follow.
Researched, Designed, & Published by The Global Language Monitor
Final
Word
Comment
Midyear
Change
26
Wet Market
Markets for a variety of live, often exotic, highly sought after, sometimes wild, animals in China.
48
Up 22
27
Symptoms
Physical conditions that may signify the presence of a virus or illness.
19
-8
28
Progressives
The word ‘liberal’ outlived its usefulness as the description of one’s political leanings
14
-14
29
Migrants
People moving from one nation, region, or geography to another.
17
-12
30
Quarantine
Restricting physical movements to one’s home or institution, often separated from all others.
16
-14
31
Outbreak
The seemingly sudden appearance of a disease in a community or geographic location.
20
-11
32
Shelter-in-place
Remain inside your current environment until the crisis has passed.
39
Up 7
33
George Floyd
George Floyd, a black American, was killed by a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on his neck for eight minutes. His death sparked global protests.
31
-2
34
Conservatives
Political philosophy that favors saving the best from the past while moving toward the future.
22
-12
35
Unemployment
Highest unemployment numbers the US has seen since the Great Recession — and possibly the Depression.
23
-12
36
Hand Sanitizer
Washing one’s hands with an anti-bacterial soap for thirty seconds is strong barrier against Covid.
25
-11
37
Stimulus
Massive $3 trillion+ funding effort by the US to help keep families (and the economy) afloat.
30
-7
38
CDC
The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.
21
-17
38
White Privilege
Supposed advantages carried by Whites by virtue of their ethnic heritage.
26
-12
39
Woke
The state of suddenly becoming aware of social injustices in the society.
33
-6
40
Self Isolate
To confine oneself in a quarantine-like state for a suggested period of time, usually two weeks.
41
Up 1
41
Disinfectant
A chemical agent that kills bacteria.
36
-5
42
Kamala Harris
Vice President-elect of the United States.
NR
NR
43
Wuhan
City in Central China, the supposed epicenter of the CoronaVirus-19 outbreak.
47
Up 4
44
Mike Pence
Sitting Vice President of the United States.
44
0
45
Mitch McConnell
Current Majority leader of the US Senate.
NR
NR
46
Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the US House of Representatives
40
-6
47
Dr. Anthony Fauci
Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; key in Covid-19 policy.
49
Up 2
48
Flatten the Curve
The movement to change the political balance of the Supreme Court of the United States by adding members with a certain political philosophy.
11
-47
49
Amy Coney Barrett
New Associate Justice of the US Supreme court, replacing Ruth Bader Ginsberg,
NR
NR
50
Antifa
A loosely affiliated group of far-left, anti-fascism activists, known as “antifa” in the United States.
NR
NR
NR
Super spreader
Persons or events that carry enhanced disease spreading capability.
46
NR
NR
Impeach Trump
The effort to remove a duly-elected or appointed official from office before their term has expired.
44
NR
NR
Dr Deborah Birx
Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
50
NR
Researched, Designed, and Published by The Global Language Monitor
Typically, the Global Language Monitor ranks words, phrases, and names on three separate lists, and the lists are limited to 20 items. For this effort, GLM has combined the lists and extended the word count to 50 items. To view the entire list, go to www.LanguageMonitor.com.
Global Language Monitor began recording the Top Words of the Year in 2000 to document the history of the 21st Century through the English language, the world’s first truly global language. The words are culled throughout the English-speaking world, which as of January 2018 ranks more than 3.12 billion speakers. Global Language Monitor employs its NarrativeTracker technologies for global internet and social media analysis.
NarrativeTracker is based on global discourse, providing a real-time, accurate picture about any topic, at any point in time. NarrativeTracker analyzes the internet, blogosphere, and the top 300,000 print and electronic global media as well as new social media sources as they emerge.
In addition, the Global Language Monitor has also tracked the Top Words, Phrases and Names of the 21st Century.
More information about these and the company can be found at Languagemonitor.com.
About Global Language Monitor
Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language. The company is known for its Word of the Year, the Top Global Fashion Capitals, political analysis, college and university rankings, high-tech buzzwords, Olympic branding, and media analytics. For more information, visit Languagemonitor.com.
Media Contact: Paul JJ Payack, +1.737.215.7750; pauljjpayack@gmail.com
WARNING: This was published in early February as a worst-case scenario. The intent was to alert the world of the on-coming catastrophe.
The idea was to take the numbers from the Hong Kong Institute of Science and Technology as published in the journal, Lancet, and to simply extrapolate them forward — if the coronavirus was left unchecked by any human intervention.
We are publishing this article only to show the extent of the spread of the virus IFLEFTUNCHECKED. All recent potential pandemics (including Ebola, SARS, and MERS) were stopped due to deliberate action taken by the worldwide medical community (especially the WHO, the CDC, NHC, etc.,) and the proper precautions directed by the relevant government bodies and heroic NGOs.
ThoughtTopper Institute: The COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Calendar
Overview: The news from China is not good. Most recently The South China Morning Post detailed,
“Measures unveiled by the authorities in Beijing and Shanghai on Monday include stricter controls on the movement of residents and vehicles, compulsory mask-wearing and shutting down leisure and other non-essential community services … Beijing Daily reported on Monday that the capital, with a population of over 20 million, would step up efforts to further restrict access to residential communities and compounds and introduce a citywide registration system for entries into Beijing.
In addition, “Officials at the epidemic control and prevention centre in Shanghai said on Monday that “the vast majority” of the city’s 13,000 residential communities and compounds had instituted “lockdown management”, including entry restrictions and mandatory temperature checks.”
Confusion Abounds
According to the New York Times, “on Thursday, officials added more than 14,840 new cases to the tally of the infected in Hubei Province alone, bringing the total number to 48,206, the largest one-day increase so far recorded. The death toll in the province rose to 1,310, including 242 new deaths.
“The sharp rise in reported cases illustrates how hard it has been for scientists to grasp the extent and severity of the coronavirus outbreak in China, particularly inside the epicenter, where thousands of sick people remain untested for the illness.”
Furthermore, some investigators have suggested that the number of new cases was leveling off and will, in fact, peak and level off in the next few weeks. One study actually picked a date (February 23); mark your calendar.
Projections from Published Numbers
The COVID-19 Calendar is based on the data provided by the British medical journal The Lancet working with data supplied to them by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and the National Health Commission (NHC) of China, among others. The Global Language Monitor is not responsible for any of the data — only with the extrapolation of the data.
Note: Tip of the Ice Berg? These extrapolations in themselves are hypothetical and should be taken as such. These numbers assume that the number of infections has been substantially under-reported, due to a number of factors.
This data was gathered with an abundance of caution after studying the various numbers coming out of Wuhan. The projected numbers are published herein because these results have been assiduously avoided in the media in all forms.
Obviously, COVID-19 cannot expand indefinitely as in the extrapolation above. Typically, these pandemics either burn themselves out or a halted through Human intervention. The gravest predictions now top out at a 60% infection rate for the entire Human population. Rest assured, that this has never happened in all recorded history.
Origin of Graphics, The Lancet
This ThoughtTopper Institute publication was compiled by Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of the Global Language Monitor.
About Global Language Monitor
Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor is a data research organization. For more information, visit Languagemonitor.com. For more information call +1.737.215.7750 or email Info@languageMonitor.com
Global Language Monitor Announces That ‘Covid’ is the Top Word of 2020 (Top 50 #WOTY Ranked)
AUSTIN, Texas,
July 6, 2020 (Newswire.com)
Global Language Monitor (GLM), the data research company that documents, analyzes, and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, has announced that Covid is the Top Word of 2020 in its mid-year update.
“It’s no surprise that ‘covid’ has risen to the top of the rankings,” said Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of GLM. “However, ‘covid’ has received the highest number of citations ever recorded in our global survey. In fact, ‘covid’ has outranked all previous Words of the Year in the 21st century by a factor of 100, or more.”
Covid is the commonly used shorthand for the shorthand for Covid-19. Covid-19 is the official name of the virus caused by the SARS CoV-2 virus, so named in WHO’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
Covid-19 is ranked No. 2 on GLM’s mid-year update. The Top Ten Words of the Year (#WOTY) for 2020 include Covid, Covid-19, Coronavirus, Corona, Face mask, Progress, Truth, Social Distancing, Trade War, and Sustainability.
Top Words of the Year of 2020 (#WOTY2020) mid-year update follow (Rank, Word, Definition/Comment).
Please Note: Typically, the Global Language Monitor publishes the Top Twenty Words in its rankings. In this #WOTY2020 mid-year update, for the historical record, we are extending the published rankings to the Top Fifty.
Global Language Monitor
Top Words of 2020 for Global English (Mid-year Update
Rank
Word
Definition
1
Covid
The shorthand for Covid-19 has the largest number of citations ever recorded in the 21st century.
2
Covid-19
The name of the virus caused by the SARS CoV-2 by WHO’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
3
Coronavirus
SARS-CoV-2 full name of virus that causes Covied-19.
4
Corona
From the Latin for ‘crown’. Compare the Sun’s corona during a total eclipse.
5
Face mask
A face covering that helps halt the spread of Covid-19 to varying degrees depending on the material and number of layers.
6
Progress
The belief that society moves ever towards betterment
7
Truth
The idea that there is an objective, discernible reality for humans to discover and cherish.
8
Social Distancing
The distance individuals should keep from each other to lessen risk of virus transmission, usually about 2 meters or six feet.
9
Trade War
Colossal struggle between US and China with worldwide repercussions.
10
Sustainability
Creating an environment that supplies certain needs without comprmising future production.
11
Flatten the Curve
The ability to manage the number of case so as to not overwhelm the hospital system.
12
Lockdown
Restricting movement outside home or district.
13
Identity Politics
Politics based on certain elements of one’s makeup, such as skin color or ethic background, or gender.
14
Progressives
The word ‘liberal’ outlived its usefulness as the description of one’s political leanings.
15
Zoom
Group meetings held over videoconferencing channels.
16
Quarantine
Restricting physical movements to one’s home or institution, often separated from all others.
17
Migrants
People moving from one nation to another.
18
Donald Trump
Donald J. Trump, the 46th president of the US.
19
Symptoms
Physical conditions that may signify the presence of a virus or illness.
20
Outbreak
The seemingly sudden appearance of a disease in a community or geographic location.
21
CDC
The Centers fo Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.
22
Conservatives
Political philosophy that favors saving the best from the past while moving toward the future.
23
Unemployment
Highest unemployment numbers the US has seen since the Great Recession — and possibly the Depression.
24
Climate Change
Climate change has ranked in the Top Ten for the last dozen years or so.
25
Hand Sanitizer
Washing one’s hands with an anti-bacterial soap for thirty seconds is a strong barrier against Covid-19.
26
White Privilege
Supposed advantages carried by Whites by virture of their ethnic heritage.
27
The Pandemic
Current global pandemic precipitated by SARS-CoV-2.
28
The Virus
Shorthand for Covid-19.
29
Work at Home
The result of social distancing guidelines where employees must stay separated from each other.
30
Stimulus
Massive $3 trillion+ funding effort by the US Federal Government to help keep families (and the economy) afloat.
31
George Floyd
George Floyd, a black American, was killed by a police officer kneeling on his neck for some eight minutes in Minneapolis. His death sparked global protests.
32
Black Lives Matter
A movement protesting police brutality against African-Americans.
33
Woke
The state of suddenly becoming aware of social injustices in the society.
34
Joe Biden
Presumptive presidential nominee of the Democrat Party against President Trump.
35
Wuhan
Largest city in Central China, capital of Hubei Province, population 11,000,000; original epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak.
36
WHO
WHO – World Health Organization was established in 1948 by the United Nations as the agency overseeing international public health.
37
Disinfectant
A chemical agent that kills bacteria.
38
New Normal
The new reality of the pandemic-ravaged world.
38
MAGA
Campaign slogan of President Trump in 2016.
39
Fake News
Packaged news, planted sources, one-sided exposes, party lines, and official narratives are a new phenomenon only to those with no sense of history.
40
Shelter-in-place
Being confined to one’s home or institution to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
41
Nancy Pelosi
The Speaker of the House of Representatives; the highest ranked Democratic office holder.
42
Self Isolate
Quarantined for a minimum of 14 days after being exposed to Covid-19 to help stop the spread of the virus.
43
Dr. Anthony Fauci
Dr. Anthony Fauci is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
44
“I Can’t Breathe”
The last words uttered by George Floyd as he lay dying at the hands of Minneapolis police.
45
Essential Workers
Those workers who perform ‘essential’ tasks during the coronavirus pandemic, most notably in healthcare, food production and distribution, and the service sector.
46
Wet Market
Outdoor markets that offer recently slaughtered meat, fish and poultry; sometimes including live animals.
47
Impeach Trump
The Trump impeachment effort ended with a vote of acquittal on February 5, 2020, just as the pandemic was taking off in the US,
48
Defund Police
A movement to re-focus police departments to social welfare duties.
49
Super Spreader
A single person or event that propagates ‘clusters’ of the outbreak. Some 20% of infected super spreaders could be responsible for 80% of viral transmission.
50
Dr. Deborah Birx
Dr. Deborah Birx is the Coronavirus Response Coordinator, White House Coronavirus Task Force.
Typically, the Global Language Monitor ranks words, phrases, and names on three separate lists, and the lists are limited to 20 items. For this effort, GLM has combined the lists and extended the word count to 50 items.
Global Language Monitor began recording the Top Words of the Year in 2000 to document the history of the 21st Century through the English language, the world’s first truly global language. The words are culled throughout the English-speaking world, which as of January 2018 ranks more than 2.58 billion speakers. Global Language Monitor employs its NarrativeTracker technologies for global internet and social media analysis.
NarrativeTracker is based on global discourse, providing a real-time, accurate picture about any topic, at any point in time. NarrativeTracker analyzes the internet, blogosphere, and the top 300,000 print and electronic global media as well as new social media sources as they emerge.
In addition, the Global Language Monitor has also tracked the Top Words, Phrases and Names of the 21st Century.
More information about these and the company can be found at Languagemonitor.com.
About Global Language Monitor
Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language. The company is known for its Word of the Year, political analysis, college and university rankings, high-tech buzzwords, and media analytics. For more information, visit Languagemonitor.com.
There is a very real and imminent threat of the emergence of “Super Spreaders” from the coronavirus pandemic. This threat appears to be largely overlooked in an analysis of the news media recently completed by Austin-based Global Language Monitor, the data research company.
This risk of the emergence of ‘super spreaders’ has been significantly heightened by three factors: the gradual re-opening of the American economy, people flocking to summertime activities after Memorial Day, and the mass protests that have arisen since the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department on May 25th, 2020.
Official statistics concerning the number of protesters have not been officially tallied, but it is reasonable to assume that there have been more than 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 participating in the US-based protests with another 500,000 in the rest of the world. The period of the protests continues lasted about two weeks ending with the march on Washington, on June 6, 2020. Many participated on multiple days, multiplying chances of exposure.
There has been significant research in the clustering and superspreader phenomena particularly since the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
On-going research, such as “Clustering and superspreading potential of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections in Hong Kong” are currently in the process of peer review, This and other similar studies are being posted online before the completion of the peer review process because of the severity of the on-going crisis.
The study suggests that most new cases of Covid-19 are propagated by ‘superspreaders’ and not by direct contact or one-on-one transmission. Researchers assessed more than 1,000 infections in Hong Kong between January 23 and April 28. The authors used intense contact tracing to determine the manner in which persons were infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. Other researchers have found that some 20% of Covid-19 carriers are responsible for about 80% of disease transmissions
Scientists tracking the new coronavirus’ spread have generally focused on two numbers: reproduction number (Rο) pronounced ‘R-nought), which represents the average number of new infections caused by a single infected person. The second is called the dispersion factor (k), a number indicating the likelihood that a particular disease will spread in clusters.
Without any social distancing, the new coronavirus’ R-number, according to the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), is around 2.6 - 3.5
This is where the K factor, measuring dispersion, comes into play. As opposed to the R number, the lower the lower the K number, the more likely it is the virus is propagated by small group of people.
Recent evidence concerning super spreading events abounds: a meeting of pharmaceutical executives in Boston; a house party in Westport, Connecticut; and a choir practice in Washington State, among many others. Each of these smaller events resulted in the transmission of the virus to scores or hundreds of individuals.
Perhaps the most well-known of the current crop of superspreaders is the unnamed bartender at an Austrian Ski Resort. Contact tracing found some 1300 infections in a number of countries traced to this particular transmitter. Infections were traced to Iceland, Norway, Austria, and Germany.
Also of note is the finding that the key method of transmission appears to be exercising one’s lungs: talking, singing, shouting, and speech-giving. This makes any large gathering problematic in the extreme; whether cheering at a Trump rally, singing on a beach or shouting at a protest.
There is some concern that the fact of the potential exponential progression of the transmission of Covid-19. is not being widely discussed in the media, as shown below.
The first graphic shows that as the Coronavirus Rapidly Spread in January, the pandemic that would ultimately take the lives of some 100,000 Americans by Labor Day, was treated as an after thought, the News Media was Focused on the Impeachment of President Trump by a 10:1 Margin (Source: Google Trends).
The second graphic shows that after the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police on May 25, the news media, overlooked the potential for the exponential growth of the virus led by the superspreader phenomenon. The ratio was 2:1 protests vs. Covid-19 stories, with virtually no mention of the inherent danger of the superspreader phenomenon.
According to Preliminary Estimation of the Basic Reproduction Number of Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China, “The mean estimate of R0 for the 2019-nCoV ranges from 2.24 to 3.58, and is significantly larger than 1”
This is especially troubling since a recent article in the New York Times, an epidemiologist opined about the number of infections that could be attributed to the recent protests are based on his assumption that “Over several weeks, as each infected person infected just under one other person on average — the current U.S. transmission rate — those infections would in turn lead to 15,000 to 50,000 more, and 50 to 500 eventual deaths”. The article does not mention the possibility of the Superspreader Phenomenon.
If the effective R nought rate is indeed closer to that found in the HKUST study and if superspreaders lurk in the midst of these crowds, both of which seem likely, than the number of infections would increase by a factor of ten, or more.
The New York Times article concluded that “Societal benefit of continued protests must be weighed against substantial potential impacts to health.” According to the CDC, some 60% of those deaths would be suffered by persons of color.
Study the figure below: Transmission network associated with a single wedding exposure subsequently linked to a preceding social gathering and local source exposure. Again, the graphic was based on contact tracing in Hong Kong.
From: Clustering and superspreading potential of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections in Hong Kong
Now consider the timely and very real example of the infamous Philadelphia Parade at the height of the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918.
A huge parade was scheduled in the summer of 1918, the height of the Spanish Flu epidemic, to take place in the heart of Philadelphia. It purpose was to raise money to support the ‘dough boys’ that had recently been shipped off to Europe to end the stalemate of the horrific ‘trench warfare’.
Some 200,000 people thronged Broad Street on parade day, along a two-mile route; they cheered as the procession passed along the route. The unintended result: within a few days, every hospital bed in he city was occupied. Within a week, nearly 3,000 died. Ultimately some 20,000 would die.
The parade was for worthy cause: The ending of the Great War. World War I ended with a death toll of some 20,000,000.
Was participating in this colossal event, showing one’s commitment to the cause, to help change the course of world events worth the risk? Most, at the time, would have answered yes.
The Windsor Women Fashion Effect & A New Fashion Hierarchy for the Windsor Women
Contact: 1.737.215.7750
pjjp@post.harvard.edu
Austin, Texas. May 20, 2018 – The Windsor Women Fashion Effect appears ready to extend far beyond The Duchess Effect with the addition of a powerful new ‘brand’: that of Meghan Markle, the soon-to-be wife of Prince Harry, the current sixth in line to the British Throne.
Meghan Markle further enhances the already formidable ‘cred’ of the Windsor family beyond that of Princess Kate as she is widely known to the world. Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, first stood atop the Fashion Buzzword List back in 2012 for ‘the Duchess Effect’, according to the annual analysis by the Global Language Monitor (GLM).
GLM utilized over 20,000,000 data points and citations to produce its data arrays. This is but a single array in the analysis.
And Introducing, The New Fashion Hierarchy for the House of Windsor
Founded in Silicon Valley, Austin, Texas-based GLM collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language.
GLM employs proprietary ‘algorithmic methodologies’ such as the NarrativeTracker for global Internet and social media analysis. NarrativeTracker is based on global discourse, providing a real-time, accurate picture of what the public is saying about any topic, at any point in time. NarrativeTracker analyzes the Internet, blogosphere, the top 375,000 print and electronic global media, as well as new media sources, as they emerge. For more information, go to www.LanguageMonitor.com, call 1.737.215.7750 or email pauljjpayack@gmail.com.
;;;
GLM has created a which is based on published findings in the journal Lancet and the University of Hong Kong. We have created our own unpublished algorithm based on the official releases of China’s National Health Commission in which the numbers are much lower but still are cause for alarm. #china
Through its proprietary algorithms, a study conducted by Global Language Monitor determined the Olympic Games themselves have a remarkable 84.5% correlation to the Coronavirus and Covid-19.
Introducing the Top Global Fashion Capitals\ for Sustainability
==Annual fashion capital rankings==
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An annual ranking of the leading fashion capitals is produced by Global Language Monitor, a US-based company that tracks trends through language use worldwide. The 2017 top-sixty three fashion capitals, according to its rankings, are listed below.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://languagemonitor.com/fashion-capitals/new-york-bests-paris-for-2017-top-global-fashion-capital-title/|title=New York Bests Paris for 2017 Top Global Fashion Capital Title |publisher=Languagemonitor.com |date= |accessdate=11 September 2017}}</ref>
|1 || [[File:Flag of USA.svg|20px]] [[New York City]] || 2
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|2 || [[File:Flag of France.svg|20px]] [[Paris]] || 1
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|3 || [[File:Flag of Spain.svg|20px]] [[Barcelona]] || 7
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|4 || [[File:Flag of Italy.svg|20px]] [[Milan]] || 6
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|5 || [[File:Flag of Italy.svg|20px]] [[Rome]] || 5
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|6 || [[File:Flag of UK.svg|20px]] [[London]] || 3
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|7 || [[File:Flag of Netherlands.svg|20px]] [[Amsterdam]] || 23
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|8 || [[File:Flag of Germany.svg|20px]] [[Berlin]] || 8
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|9 || [[File:Flag of USA.svg|20px]] [[Las Vegas]] || 23
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|10 || [[File:Flag of United Arab Emirates.svg|20px]] [[Dubai]] || 17
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|11 || [[File:Flag of Singapore.svg|20px]] [[Singapore]] || 14
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|12 || [[File:Flag of Hong Kong.svg|20px]] [[Hong Kong]] || 12
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|13 || [[File:Flag of Italy.svg|20px]] [[Florence]] || 11
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|14 || [[File:Flag of USA.svg|20px]] [[Los Angeles]] || 4
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|15 || [[File:Flag of Spain.svg|20px]] [[Madrid]] || 9
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|16 || [[File:Flag of Indonesia.svg|20px]] [[Bali]] || 40
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|17 || [[File:Flag of South Korea.svg|20px]] [[Seoul]] || 56
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|18 || [[File:Flag of the Czech Republic.svg|20px]] [[Prague]] || 33
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|19 || [[File:Flag of Brazil.svg|20px]] [[Rio de Janeiro]] || 18
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|20 || [[File:Flag of Argentina.svg|20px]] [[Buenos Aires]] || 29
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|21 || [[File:Flag of USA.svg|20px]] [[Washington, D.C.]] || 54
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|22 || [[File:Flag of Russia.svg|20px]] [[Moscow]] || 22
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|23 || [[File:Flag of Japan.svg|20px]] [[Tokyo]] || 10
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|24 || [[File:Flag of Chile.svg|20px]] [[Santiago]] || 43
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|25 || [[File:Flag of Austria.svg|20px]] [[Vienna]] || 34
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|26 || [[File:Flag of China.svg|20px]] [[Shanghai]] || 15
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|27 || [[File:Flag of India.svg|20px]] [[Mumbai]] || 38
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|28 || [[File:Flag of Australia.svg|20px]] [[Melbourne]] || 49
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|29 || [[File:Flag of Sweden.svg|20px]] [[Stockholm]] || 46
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|30 || [[File:Flag of Thailand.svg|20px]] [[Bangkok]] || 50
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|31 || [[File:Flag of Poland.svg|20px]] [[Warsaw]] || 42
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|32 || [[File:Flag of Denmark.svg|20px]] [[Copenhagen]] || 36
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|33 || [[File:Flag of USA.svg|20px]] [[San Francisco]] || 37
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|34 || {{flagicon image|Flag of Australia.svg}} [[Sydney]] || 13
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|35 || {{flagicon image|Flag of Brazil.svg}} [[São Paulo]] ||16
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|36 || {{flagicon image|Flag of Belgium.svg}} [[Antwerpen]] || 25
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|37 || [[File:Flag of RSA.svg|20px]] [[Johannesburg]] || 48
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|38 || {{flagicon image|Flag of USA.svg|20px}} [[Dallas]] || 20
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|39 || [[File:Flag of USA.svg|20px]] [[Austin]] || 45
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|40 || [[File:Flag of the United Arab Emirates.svg|20px]] [[Abu Dhabi]] || Debut
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|41 || [[File:Flag of Russia.svg|20px]] [[St Petersburg]] || 35
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|42 || [[File:Flag of South Africa.svg|20px]] [[Cape Town]] || 41
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|43 || [[File:Flag of Mexico.svg|20px]] [[Mexico City]] || 53
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|44 || {{flagicon image|Flag of USA.svg}} [[Portland, Oregon]] || Debut
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|45 || [[File:Flag of Germany.svg|20px]] [[Frankfurt]] || 51
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|46 || {{flagicon image|Flag of USA.svg}} [[Boston]] || 24
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|47 || {{flagicon image|Flag of Malaysia.svg|20px}} [[Kuala Lumpur]] || Debut
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|48 || [[File:Flag of RSA.svg|20px]] [[Johannesburg]] || 37
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|49 || {{flagicon image|Flag of Monaco.svg}} [[Monaco]] || 21
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|50 || {{flagicon image|Flag of USA.svg}} [[Atlanta, Georgia]] || 47
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|51 || [[File:Flag of India.svg|20px]] [[New Delhi]] || 39
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|52 || [[File:Flag of Canada.svg|20px]] [[Vancouver]] || 52
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|53 || {{flagicon image|Flag of USA.svg}} [[Chicago, Illinois]] || 27
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|54 || {{flagicon image|Flag of USA.svg}} [[Houston, Texas]] || 30
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|55 || [[File:Flag of Canada.svg|20px]] [[Montreal]] || 47
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|56 || [[File:Flag of Senegal.svg|20px]] [[Dakar]] || Debut
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|57 || [[File:Flag of Lebanon.svg|20px]] [[Beirut]] || Debut
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|58 || [[File:Flag of Poland.svg|20px]] [[Kraków]] || 44
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|59 || {{flagicon image|Flag of Canada.svg}} [[Toronto]] || 28
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|60 || [[File:Flag of Nigeria.svg|20px]] [[Lagos]] || Debut
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|61 || {{flagicon image|Flag of USA.svg}} [[Columbus, Ohio|Columbus]] || Debut
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|62 || {{flagicon image|Flag of Ghana.svg}} [[Accra]] || Debut
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|63 || [[File:Flag of Venezuela.svg|20px]] [[Caracas]] || Hiatus
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|}
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===Commentary from Global Language Monitor About the 2017 edition of its annual fashion capital rankings===
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The current 2017 rankings now include 63 fashion capitals. There are three new fashion capitals from West Africa: Accra, Ghana; Dakar, Senegal; and Lagos, Nigeria. There is one new fashion capital from East Asia: Kuala Lumpur. There is one new fashion capital from the Middle East: Beirut, Lebanon. Before the various insurgencies in the region, Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East. There are two new fashion capitals from North America: Portland, Oregon known for its ‘weird’ culture, much like Austin, Texas and Columbus, Ohio known in the fashion world as the manufacturing headquarters of Henri Bendel, Victoria’s Secret, the Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F), and others.
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====Commentary from Global Language Monitor individual cities in the 2017 edition====
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No. 3 Barcelona — Moving into Big Four Territory is Big News by definition.
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No. 4 Milano — Reclaiming its Big Four status; hmm, perhaps all that re-thinking and revamping just might be having an impact (we’ll see in 2018).
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No. 6 London — Had a great run earlier in the decade, but not so great lately (If you consider the No. 6 spot not so great).
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No. 7 Amsterdam — Moving up 15 spots is quite a move.
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No. 9 Vegas — Back in the Top Ten, more evidence that the Red Carpet experience does indeed have an impact.
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No. 10 Dubai — More evidence that billions of dollars Do, indeed, have an impact.
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No. 17 Seoul — Finally making the move in Asia, not No. 1, but a respectable No. 3 regionally.
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No. 21 Washington, DC — A move into respectability!?
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No. 28 Melbourne and No. 34 Sydney — Trading Places
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No. 44 Portland, OR — A very nice debut.
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No. 47 Kuala Lumpur — Another solid debut.
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No. 46 Boston, No. 48 Miami, No.53 Chicago, No. 54 Houston, and No. 59 Toronto — All down by twenty spots, or more.
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No. 63 Caracas — On Hiatus due to Insurrection.
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Methodology: For this analysis, the Global Language Monitor used its proprietary Brand Affiliation Index (BAI), the same technology used to measure global brand equity for the Olympics, World Cup, the Fortune 500, and others. This exclusive, GLM longitudinal-study encompasses the prior three years to better assess short-term velocity and longer-term momentum. The study is a Big Data textual analysis based on billions of webpages, millions of blogs, the top 375,000 global print and electronic media, and new social media formats as they appear. This is the eleventh edition of the survey, which was first made public in 2007.
Most Recognized Word on the Planet: OK or O.K. or Okay
U.S. President Martin Van Buren (A.D. 1837–1841) was born in Old Kinderhook, New York. His nickname, Old Kinderhook, was incorporated into his campaign slogan (“Old Kinderhook is O.K.”) and O.K. Democratic Clubs sprung up around the young nation. Van Buren was a founding member of the Democratic Party. (He was overwhelmingly defeated by the Whigs in his re-election attempt in 1840.)
Presaging O.K. Democratic Clubs, was the pronunciation of the phrase ‘oll korrect’ in a bit of humerous wordplay found in the Boston Post newspaper in 1839.
Didn’t you ever wonder why the word consists of two capital letters? OK is now widely heard wherever one sets foot on the planet.
Alternative derivations, since disproven, suggested that OK was from the Greek phrase ola kala for ‘all well’ used in the shipping industry. Another, actually favored by president Woodrow Wilson, was that OK was derived from the Choctaw ‘okeh’.
However, what is sure is that the U.S. Presidential Election of 1840 secured its growing usage and subsequent global expansion during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Another lesser known catalyst to the word’s present ubiquitous, is the the global dominance of the software of the Microsoft Corporation. Some 80% of its computer programs that are ‘localized’ into native languages use the English word OK to assert completion or assent.
Author’s Note: I wrote this aimost fifty years ago, during the Bobbie Fisher- Boris Spassky World Chess Championship held in Reykjavík, Iceland in 1972.
This was the beginning of the chess boom that continues to this day. You can’t call it a revival, because previous to this, chess was a fringe activity, at best, played by old men on park benches arguing in Yiddish, nerds before they were known as such, and pipe-smoking, well-to-do elder gentlemen player one other on seculded leafy estates.
I was captivated by the match and who wouldn’t be: the ‘Free World’ vs. the Soviet Communists, a brash, ill-mannered young American vs. the gentlemanly Grandmaster of old-school ways and traditional chess thinking. I went out bought every chess book I could find in Harvard Square and at the Chess Shop on Newberry Street (including the infamous Blue Book of Chess. At that time, the Blue Book recorded every move in evey championship match from the days of Lasker onward.. I also picked up a championship-scaled chessboard with the requisite ivory-styled pieces, a chess clock, and the like. But the one thing I could not find was a definitive History of Chess.
So I decided to write one myself. After countless hours of research (no internet, nor on-line journals, no Wikipedia, just Harvard’s Widener Library’s dusty stacks, I drafted The Tangles of Timee: A Short History of Chess over that summer and now present it to you here.
— Paul JJ Payack
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Chess yields us, when we need them most
Companions in our loneliness.
—Mu’ Tazz
As masterful a player
as Emmanuel Lasker regarded chess as neither an art nor a science but rather a
war in which the pieces served as troops and the players the generals. This
stemmed from the notion that chess was invented as a war game and so, that is
the manner in which it should executed. Undoubtedly reality is reflected in the
idea that chess originated either as an aid or substitute for warfare.
Lasker maintained
that to understand its creation all that is needed is an understanding of the
method of classical warfare. Lasker explained that opposing armies would take
their positions in nearly straight lines separated by a nearly level plain. The
generals, in order to make their plans comprehensible to their commanders,
would sketch the original position and later movements of their pawns and men.
Lasker was fond of using the Battle of Cannae, 216 BC, as an illustration. At
Cannae, the Carthaginians under the command of Hannibal defeated a Roman force
nearly twice their number with superior strategy.
Lasker thought that
it was entirely possible that Hannibal not only drew lines and placed stones on
a board to explain his stratagems, but did so on what would one day be called a
chequer-board. This was given the now familiar shape of a square divided into
sixty-four smaller squares, colored black and white alternately. Though
Lasker’s contention that chess was invented as a game of war is undoubtedly
true, he seems to have postdated its conception by some eight centuries and
misplaced it by several worlds.
After a millennium
passed in the Buddhist era, various references occur to a game that seems the
direct forbear of present-day chess. According to Sanskrit literature, apart
from the central king and counselor, the pieces represented the quadrants of
the ancient Indian army: war chariots, cavalry, elephants, and foot soldiers.
The Upper Basin of the Ganges, or thereabouts, was the locale where
this game first
appeared. Since the area was a Buddhist stronghold, it is not unreasonable to
assume that their monks had a hand in its inception. Since Buddhists oppose the
killing of any form of life, it can be hypothesized that the game was invented
as a bloodless substitute for war (by allowing men to engage in a combat of a
higher sort).
In this version the
infantrymen moved as pawns of all times and places, excepting the modern
two-square debut. The cavalrymen were placed and manipulated in the same manner
as the knight. The elephants’ movements were diagonal and limited to two
squares, therefore they were inherently weaker than the bishops into which they
were later transformed. The chariots were equal in every respect to the castles
which through some ripple in history came to be called rooks. And the
counselor, beside the king, moved diagonally also and only one square per move;
as time passed its powers were increased to that of the bishop, thereby
considerably enhancing the complexity of the game.
Chess spread rapidly
(in historical terms) from the Subcontinent to the curiously diverse cultures
further west, each leaving ineradicable traces of their time and culture.
Persia bestowed the name to the game. Words, unlike mathematical formulae, both
lose and gain in their sojourn through time and place. Aside from the usual
etymological eddies, the development of the name flowed as follows. The Persian
shah “king” came through the Arabic and the tangles of time to Europe as, among
other variations, the Old French (e)sches, plural of (e)schek “check” derived
from “shah.” From there it was but a minor simplification to the Saxon and
Modern English word “chess.”
The culmination of
this bloodless substitute for bloodletting is the murder of the enemy king,
although the modern game ends euphemistically with the checkmate. This term,
too, can be traced through a millennium to Persia. Shah mat “checkmate” means
‘the king (shah) is dead,’ where “mat” is related to the Latin stem mort-
“death” found in “mortuary.”
Within a generation of the Hegira, the Arabs conquered Persia in the sacred name of Mohammed. As is usually the case, the two cultures became inextricably entwined and from that time forward it was the Islamic culture that became the primary vehicle of chess. As the game was carried from land to land it underwent a series of transmutations, some
surprising and some not so surprising at all.
The Elephant was
reduced to its ears. That is it was simplified (for reasons of convenience and
religion) to a lump of wood, with a cut extracted from its center. An item of
far more interest concerns the Arab rukh which predates the English rook for
crow. It is still a matter of some controversy whether the rook was actually a
chariot, a bird, or even a ship. It is highly probable that in differing
cultures in differing centuries it was each.
In Arabia there seems
little doubt that the chariot was replaced by a moderately prominent member the
then-current mythology. In Arabian Nights the rukh was an enormous bird of
gigantic girth which was inordinately wide of wing; a vast magnification of the
eagle or condor. In most variations, the bird had the ability to carry an
elephant, and sometimes several, in its talons. The thread of interest that
lies about and through all variations of the rukh myth is that it was, whatever
else, a deadly enemy of the elephant. (Later, with the aristocratization of
chess, the elephant would be transformed into an ecclesiastic.)
Soon chess was a
commonplace throughout the world of Islam, from Andalus in the West to the
Indus in the East. The Moors carried chess to the Iberian Peninsula during the
eighth century of the Christian era, and the Eastern Empire in Byzantium also
learned of the game before the century had waned. From Iberia it spread to the
north of Europe, while Russia seems to have acquired the game directly from
India. (In Russian chess bears its original name, shakh-maty.)
During the High
Middle Ages chess became a leisure time activity of the feudal lords, and the
pieces began to resemble the aristocracy. (The rukh became, curiously enough, a
castle.) A knowledge of ‘Nights and Days’ was considered a social grace for
every genteel and parfait knight. Obviously, one reason for this was the
connection between chess and war. Soon the powers of certain pieces were
increased,making the game much more lively or, if you prefer, deadly.
That lump of wood
with the split was not recognized in Europe as an elephant. This was
understandably so, since to the folks of medieval Europe an elephant was just
as much a mythological creature as the rukh, and possibly more so. To those who
were unaware of its esoteric meaning, the elephant, also suggested a bishop’s
mitre, an old man, a count or a fool. To this day in French the man is called Le
Fou “the fool” and it is diagramed as a cap and bells.
The English, however,
were the first to introduce chess diagrams to printing and since the piece
remained a bishop there (and in Iceland) the bishop’s mitre would soon become
the worldwide standard. However, Germans use this now universal symbol for
their laufer “runner” while Russians use the mitre for their slon “the
elephant.”
The evolution of the
king’s counselor into the queen has been attributed to the similarity of the
Arabic word fere “advisor,” to the French vierge “maiden” but probably can be
more simply attributed to the make-up of the feudal court. A parallel between
the historical liberation of women and the glorification of Mary by the
Church could also have been factors in the metamorphosis.
And finally, a
mention should be made of pawns; those so adequately named pieces which are
even denied the status of chess ‘men’. They are, without exception in all
cultures, represented by conveniently small and humble objects. For these there
seems a universal need. History: read it and weep.
There are some 1.7 x
10 to the 29th methods of playing the first ten moves of this ancient and
storied game. (The Greeks, clever as they were, didn’t even possess a symbol or
number for any number larger than ten to the fourth, a myriad.) This being so,
it becomes comprehensible why, while chess has ebbed and flowed through
history, it has never been successful as a method of channeling the human mind
to that combat of a higher sort.
To be sure, there
have been wars of every possible description since its inception some thirteen
hundred years ago, and when the number of possible permutations is envisioned
even in this relatively simple game, it becomes obvious why there is more than
adequate room for that phenomenon, war, in the universal scheme of things. This
nightmare, even when contained by a square of sixty-four smaller squares, has
the potential to continue in a million billion varying guises for eons on end
(and still there would remain variations untried).
When one of the first
Caliphs, Omar b. Al-Khattab, was asked if chess were lawful he replied, “There
is nothing wrong in it; it has to do with war.”
The Bottom Line: “turbulent gas clouds and respiratory pathogen emissions pose a threat to the public even without the presence of a host. In other words: the longer an individual is outside unprotected, the higher the contraction risk,” said MIT associate professor Lydia Bourouiba.
‘Words of the Pandemic’ glossary and explainer has been released by the Global Language Monitor.
“As with other global and significant events, GLM has assembled ‘The Words of the Pandemic’ explainer, a glossary of the essential terms the educated layperson needs to know to better understand the significance of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic as it unfolds.” said Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of the Global Language Monitor.
The “Words of the Pandemic” explainer will be continuously updated. Below is the list of currently defined terms.
Term Definition
Asymptomatic – Those who test positive for Covid-19 who present no immediate symptoms.
Black Death — The most devastating pandemic recorded in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75-to-200 million people in Eurasia, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351.
CDC — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Located in Atlanta, Georgia, the CDC is part of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Contagion — The definition of contagion is an infectious disease spread through contact, or the transmission of a disease from one person to another through contact, or the spread of a bad or harmful idea or practice
Corona – A crown or anything resembling a crown. Also, the ring of highly charged ions surrounding the Sun that is visible during a total eclipse. Under an electron microscope, the coronavirus outer surface resembles a crown. Before the invention of the electron microscope, pandemic had more prosaic names such as the Black Death or Spanish Flu.
Covid-19 – The disease caused by the n-coronavirus-19 virus. Officially named: SARS-CoV-2. n-coronavirus-19 is the medical classification of the current pandemic.
Endemic — A medical condition, regularly found a particular group or population.
Epicenter – The precise center of an earthquake or activity, or phenomenon. The epicenter of Covid-19 is Wuhan China.
Epidemic — An outbreak of disease that spreads quickly and affects many individuals at the same time.
Epidemiology — the branch of medicine that investigates the causes and control of epidemics.
Exponential Growth — Growth whose rate becomes ever more rapid in proportion to the growing total number or size.
Flatten the Curve — Keeping people apart in time and space with social distancing measures, self-isolation and actual quarantine decreases opportunities for transmission. The graphic below illustrates the effects of flattening the curve — a steep peak indicating a surge of coronavirus outbreak in the near term; the other has a flatter slope, indicating a more gradual rate of infection over a longer period of time. The gentler curve results in fewer people infected at the beginning of an epidemic. In effect, lessening the probability of a ‘’surge’ that would inundate a hospital system, as was recently occurred in Northern Italy. The idea is to provide more time for a healthcare system to ramp up supplies, develop new medicines, and medical procedures.
Ground Zero — The location where the first case occurred, another term for ‘epicenter’.
H1N1 — The current strain of H1N1 consists of genes already found in existing variations of swine, avian and human flu viruses.
Inanimate Objects – So-called “seeds of disease” are able to transfer disease from one person to another. In that new NEJM study, here’s the finding on coronavirus: The coronavirus that causes covid-19 “was detectable … up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.” Glass such as the ‘Gorilla Glass’ used for smart-phone displays are said to carry the virus for 10-days.
Incubation Period — The time from exposure to a virus to the appearance of the symptoms.
Influenza — A serious disease caused by viruses that infects the upper respiratory tract.
Influenza Pandemic — A global outbreak of a new influenza ‘A’ virus that is easily transmitted from person-to-person worldwide.
Mutating Virus — In general, any flu virus mutates and evolves mechanisms that enable it to escape the immune defense systems of its victims. Scientists have now identified some six strains of the virus that causes Covid-19.
Outbreak – Sudden increase in occurrence of disease in a particular place or locality.
Pandemic – an epidemic occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population.
Pandemic Phases — WHO has divided pandemics into six phases. (See Figure.)
Pandemic Phase 1 — Low risk of human cases. No viruses circulating among animals have been reported to cause infections in humans.
Pandemic Phase 2 — Higher risk of human cases. An animal influenza virus circulating among domesticated or wild animals is known to have caused infection in humans and is therefore considered a potential pandemic threat.
Pandemic Phase 3 — No or very limited human-to-human transmission. An animal or human-animal influenza re-assortant virus has caused sporadic cases or small clusters of disease in people but has not resulted in human-to-human transmission sufficient to sustain community-level outbreaks.
Pandemic Phase 4 — Human-to-human transmission of an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus able to cause “community-level outbreaks.” Implementation of a rapid pandemic containment operation is warranted. Phase 4 indicates a significant increase in risk of a pandemic.
Pandemic Phase 5 — Evidence of significant human-to-human transmission. Human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.
Pandemic Phase 6 — Efficient and sustained human-to-human transmission. This pandemic phase is characterized by community level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region in addition to the criteria defined in Phase 5. Designation of this phase indicates that a global pandemic is under way.2q
Pangolin – A scaly anteater; a toothless mammal found in Asia and Africa that is thought to have passed the coronavirus from horse bats to humans. Pangolins were suspected of being sold in an open-air to be ingested by humans.
Plague – The plague is an infectious disease due to a bacterium called Yersinia pestis. Y. that mainly infects rats and other rodents.
Quarantine – Isolating individuals to prevent the spread of infection diseases.
Quarantine in Place – Isolation for a two-week period after exposure to someone with Covid-19.
R0 — Reproductive value where R0 is the average number of people who will catch the disease from a single infected person, in a population that’s never seen the disease before; if it’s greater than 1, the infection will probably keep spreading, and if it’s less than 1, the outbreak will likely peter out. New research reviews the basic reproduction number (R0) of the new coronavirus, that is, the number that indicates how transmissible a virus is, and finds that it is much higher than current estimates. R0 for 2019-nCoV is expected to be around 2–3,
“Ring Around the Rosie” – Globally known children’s rhyme that harkens back to the Bubonic Plague of the Middle Ages.
Shelter in Place – An order to remain safety within the building one already occupies, rather than to evacuate the area or seek a community emergency shelter.
Self-isolate — Anyone with the tell-tale fever or cough has been told to self-isolate entirely for seven days, while other members of their household must do the same for two weeks.
Social Distancing — (See Update Newsflash Atop List) Keeping people apart in time and space with social distancing measures, self-isolation and actual quarantine decreases opportunities for transmission.
Spanish Flu – Some fifty-to-200 million or more died in the 1918 pandemic, up to 200,000 in the US. Some 30% of the world’s population of 1.5 billion were infected.
Super Spreader — In epidemics, a small number of people can spread a disproportionately large number of infections.
Swine Flu — Officially named swine influenza A (H1N1).
Symptoms — Body aches, fever, headaches, sore throat, body pain, chills and fatigue. Sometimes diarrhea and vomiting.
Tokyo 2020: The Games of the XXXII Olympiad – The Summer Olympic Games have been rescheduled to begin on July 23, 2021.
Typhoid Mary — Ms. Mallon was suspected of transmitting typhoid fever to 51 people during the Spanish Flu pandemic (Possibly by serving ice cream with unwashed hands.).
WHO — Located in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Health Organization, is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations
Zoonotic – Diseases that spread from animals to humans, such as the Covid-19 and Ebola.
About the Global Language Monitor
Austin-Texas-based Global Language Monitor is a data research firm that analyzes and catalogues the latest trends in word usage and word choices, and their impact on the various aspects of culture, with a particular emphasis upon Global English. For more information, email info@LanguageMonitor.com, visit www.LanguageMonitor.com, or call +1.737.215.7750.
The potential for a global pandemic of historic proportions was in plain sight for the administration, academia, and the global media to see in January and February.
Back in January, the Global Language Monitor, the data research company, created a data model of the expansion of the newly discovered n-coronavirus in Wuhan, China. (You can see this on the LanguageMonitor (dot) com site.)
The numbers were truly frightening, so frightening that I decided not to publish my findings until I could find a respected research study that mirrored my numbers and projections. I found one, published in The Lancet medical journal in the UK, that used data from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUS&T). The Lancet created a number of graphics that illustrated the impending nightmare that you can see on our site.
The key to HKS&T’s data is that it assumes a much larger base to start from (rather than China’s official count). I then created the Coronavirus Calendar that I published about six or seven weeks ago, the main point of which was that the virus doubles every six days or so, with an infection rate of 2.63 with a mortality rate of about .02. (The mortality rate has been a bit lower over the last few weeks but is actually higher in Iran and Italy.) GLM distributed this study to the worldwide media.
Though I created the Coronavirus Calendar, I am still shocked at how quickly it is moving. (For California, that’s 39 million * .6 * .02%.) If you extrapolate these numbers for your community, state, region or nation, you can see the horrifying conclusions.
This is not to say, of course, that this result is inevitable. There is still much that can be done by the concerted efforts of the global institutions — and the very real fact that many pandemics in the past have actually burned themselves out.
Paul JJ Payack President The Global Language Monitor Austin, Texas
Climate Change is an asteroid heading for a direct hit on Earth.
Updated: March 22, 2020
June 18-19, 2014, AUSTIN, Texas — The recent report on human-enhanced climate change points to the problem. The US National Climate Assessment, released May 6, 2014, represents the most comprehensive attempt yet to assess the current effects of human-enhanced climate change on America’s (and the Earth’s) future. Why does confusion persist about the subject? After all, Global Warming /Climate Change have ranked near the top of our Top Word lists for more than a decade.
Perhaps the major difficulty is overcoming the fact that:
Few news reporters are well-versed in technical and scientific communication.
Few scientists are well-versed in communicating effectively to a large public audience in non-scientific terms.
The public is not trained in deciphering the reams of information that presents the case that is being argued.
Therefore, lack of technical communication skills inhibit true understanding of climate change news. As a former university lecturer on Scientific and Technical Communications, I’ve created a few rules to keep close to heart.
Rule No. 1 When Communicating a Scientific Truth Be Sure to Communicate the Whole Truth — The audience instinctively knows when you are leaving out some of the story that you think might confuse the issue.
Well known Fact: The temperatures are now the highest in 1,000 years.
Larger Reality: The global surface temperature has fluctuated greatly over the last 2100 years. Scientific and Technical writing professionals would, one hopes, clarify the discussion by writing from the audience’s point-of-view. An educated audience would expect a phrase, such as ‘not in a thousand years’ to mean ‘not ever’. They would likely be concerned if they knew an author to be shading the truth that actually obscures the larger truth.
Suffice to say the global temperature has fluctuated greatly over the last 1200 years as shown in the graphic using four different sources. Also note there was the well-known historical fact of the Little Ice Age, with many early New England documents noting various ‘Year(s) Without Summer(s)”.
Temperature Fluctuation Over Preceding 1200 Years
Rule No. 2 Just because any particular analysis might be short-sighted, there is no need for you to be short-sighted also.
Well known Fact: Paleo-Indians crossed the Bering Land Bridge to first settle the Americas.
Larger Reality: For the Bering Land Bridge to exist, the sea level had to be about 100 meters (290 feet) LOWER than its current level.
The Bering Land Bridge About 15,000 BCE
The US National Climate Assessment is estimating a one-to-two meter rise by the turn of the 22nd century. Add in the human-enhancement factor and climate change will be even more dramatic (and possibly happen more quickly) than anticipated.
Rule No. 3 In 10,000 BCE, (8,000 BC), New York City was also under a mile (1.6 km) of ice. Jericho was a thriving (albeit small) city at this time. Most people who are aware of this fact, place it in the distant past, say, 1,000,000 years BCE.
Well known Fact (though not true): Climate Change began in the late 20th century OR with the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.
Larger Truth: Climate Change began with the advent of the atmosphere as we know it about 600 million years ago. This atmosphere enabled the ‘Cambrian Explosion’ as millions of life forms suddenly appeared on land.
The climate created by this atmosphere began to change at that time and continues to do so some 600,000,000 years later though we only have specific details of the last half-million years or so, as shown below.
These are a broad outline of temperature changes over the last 400,000 years as recorded by three different methods. Perhaps the most familiar is the Vostok Ice Core (Antarctica), drilled to a depth of 11,887 feet (3623 m) in 1998.
Conclusion: There are well-known facts that pale before a larger reality. Do not trim your arguments (whatever they be) to exclude the larger reality.
Well Known Fact: Climate Change is happening and its profound effect upon humankind is real. Human-influenced climate change is a new scientific reality
Larger Reality: Climate Change has a detailed in the scientific record for about 4oo,ooo years — and it has been ongoing for about 600,000,000 years.
What was the ongoing debate of our Paleoindian ancestors as they watched the megafauna (wooly mammoths, saber tooth tigers, etc.) disappear as the 5,000 ft (1.6 km) ice cap atop Manhattan melted away beneath their feet?
The Paleoindians had it within their power to preserve the megafauna if they had known the consequences of their overhunting. However, the retreating glacier, a consequence of global cooling, was beyond their control.
Today humankind faces the same two problems. And this time we have a bigger stake in the game. If the will is there, we can stop or at least alter the course of the Fourth Great Extinction. And if the will is there, we can curb at least the human-enhancement portion of climate change, whether or not the planet is subject to the larger, longer-term climatic cycles.
Through its proprietary algorithms, a study conducted by Global Language Monitor determined the Olympic Games themselves have a remarkable 84.5% correlation to the Coronavirus and Covid-19.
Copyright 2020 Global Language Monitor
The Correlation Between Tokyo 2020 and the Coronavirus
As the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo fast approach, the threat of coronavirus is dominating the global conversation. Global Language Monitor (GLM), an Austin-based data research firm that analyzes Global trends across the world, helps companies discover how their brands are being perceived, and how closely they are being associated with current events.
In their exclusive ambush marketing analysis for the seventh consecutive Olympic Games, GLM has found that the Tokyo 2020 Games have themselves been ambushed by the coronavirus and COVID-19, with a remarkable 84.5% correlation to the coronavirus and Covid-19.
This means that in GLM’s global research data, out of every 100 references to the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, more than 80 also contained a reference to the coronavirus and/or COVID-19. The study was concluded on March 16, 2020
“In our studies over the years we have found some remarkable ambushers from an animated cartoon character (Beijing 2008, Kung-fu Panda) to world leaders on the brink of a nuclear crisis (PyeongChang 2018, Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump), but never did we imagine a global pandemic as an Olympic Ambusher,” said Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of the Global Language Monitor.
Going a step further, the GLM study also includes an analysis on how closely brands and a number of their competitors are being affected by the coronavirus, which is a global concern in the lead up to the Tokyo Games. The information is critical in helping brands position themselves accordingly and adapt to the volatility of the situation as the threat of COVID-19 looms.
“We actually found a remarkable correlation between the coronavirus and the Worldwide Olympic Partners,” Payack continued. “A number of the Brands (and ambushers), actually had nearly as many citations linked to the coronavirus as to the Games themselves. In a few cases, citations to the coronavirus actually exceeded those to the Tokyo 2020.”
Affiliation Between Worldwide Olympic Partners and the Coronavirus
Using the BAI™ (Brand Affiliation Index™), and the EAI™ (Entity Affiliation Index™) and other proprietary algorithms, GLM also determined which Tokyo sponsors are linked most closely to the Tokyo 2020 brand, as shown in the chart below,
The Affiliation of the Worldwide Olympic Partners to the Tokyo 2020 Brand by BAI
The study pulls data from an abundance of data points from across the internet and the top 350,000 print, electronic news media outlets, and social networking sites analyzing sentiment, context and a host of other factors to determine which Worldwide Olympic Partners are most closely associated with the Olympic Games, and which brands are being closely associated with Covid-19, the coronavirus or both. The findings are published in the Tokyo 2020 Ambush Marketing Report [link]. The Top Ambush Marketers ninety-days out from the start of the Tokyo Games follow:
The Top Ambush Marketers ninety-days out from the start of
the Tokyo Games follow:
The Top Ambushers of the Worldwide Olympic Partners by BAI™
Tokyo 2020 sponsors are segmented by the amount they pay in fees to the (IOC) International Olympic Committee. The various classifications are Worldwide Olympic Partners, Olympic Gold Partners, Olympic Official Partners, Official Olympic Supporters.
Though sponsorship fees are never officially acknowledged, the total, fully loaded, cost of a tier-one Olympic Sponsorship has been estimated to be as much as one billion USD ($1,000,000,000) over the course of a four-year Olympiad. Partners’ competitors are also put under the microscope to determine the effectiveness of ambush marketing techniques. In Olympics past, opportunistic ambush marketers have leveraged the worldwide popularity of the Olympic Games without any sort of sponsorship, yet still maintained a high degree of association. The analysis helps provide insights that empower brands with leverage to determine whether their investment is worthwhile. The complete Tokyo Olympics Ambush Marketing Report is available, here.
Early this March, the IOC Executive Board expressed its full commitment to the Tokyo Games, scheduled to take place from July 24 to August 9, reporting that all protective measures are being taken to address the coronavirus situation. This situation has steadily deteriorated.
One of the Fastest Words Ever to be Recognized in Global English
March 3, 2020, Austin, Texas — Infodemic has been accepted as an official English-Language word by the Global Language Monitor (GLM), the US-based data research firm. This is among the fastest a word has ever met the minimum criteria for ‘wordhood,’ about six weeks from the first recorded citation.
The prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, commented a few days ago: “A global epidemic of misinformation - spreading rapidly through social media platforms and other outlets - poses a serious problem for public health.
According to the MIT Technology Review, “The coronavirus is the first true social-media “infodemic” [where] Social media has zipped information and misinformation around the world at unprecedented speeds, fueling panic, racism … and hope”.
“Infodemic has met all requirements to be considered an English-language word — ready to takes its place among the million-or-so others of the fourteen-hundred-year-old language,” said Paul JJ Payack, GLM’s President and Chief Word Analyst.
To be considered an official English-language, the neologism must satisfy all three criteria:
Geographic distribution — The word must appear across political entities and geographic regions.
Diversity of Media — The word must appear in a variety of media, including print and electronic media, online and social media, and books and magazines.
A minimum number of citations: 25,000.
At the Munich Security Conference on February 15, the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pronounced, “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic”. Within a few weeks, market data provider Refinitiv included the word in research reports and then was repeated in various media outlets, including the South China Morning Post.
A quick search on Goole now provides nearly 700,000 entries.
Infodemic is a ‘portmanteau’ neologism. First used by Lewis Carroll in 1871, a linguistic blend of words or phonemes (sounds) are combined into a new word, in this case, Information and epidemic, Such words can be easier to pronounce and understand than other types of new word creation.
About Global Language Monitor
Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language. The company is known for its Word of the Year, To Global Fashion Capitals, political analysis, college and university rankings, high-tech buzzwords, and media analytics.
For more information, visit Languagemonitor.com, email info@languagemonitor.com or call +1.737.215.7750.
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We are publishing this article only to show the extent of the spread of the virus IFLEFTUNCHECKED. All recent potential pandemics (including Ebola, SARS, and MERS) were stopped due to deliberate action taken by the worldwide medical community (especially the WHO, the CDC, NHC, etc.,) and the proper precautions directed by the relevant government bodies and heroic NGOs.
“Measures unveiled by the authorities in Beijing and Shanghai on Monday include stricter controls on the movement of residents and vehicles, compulsory mask-wearing and shutting down leisure and other non-essential community services … Beijing Daily reported on Monday that the capital, with a population of over 20 million, would step up efforts to further restrict access to residential communities and compounds and introduce a citywide registration system for entries into Beijing.
In addition, “Officials at the epidemic control and prevention centre in Shanghai said on Monday that “the vast majority” of the city’s 13,000 residential communities and compounds had instituted “lockdown management”, including entry restrictions and mandatory temperature checks.”
Confusion Abounds
According to the New York Times, “on Thursday, officials added more than 14,840 new cases to the tally of the infected in Hubei Province alone, bringing the total number to 48,206, the largest one-day increase so far recorded. The death toll in the province rose to 1,310, including 242 new deaths.
“The sharp rise in reported cases illustrates how hard it has been for scientists to grasp the extent and severity of the coronavirus outbreak in China, particularly inside the epicenter, where thousands of sick people remain untested for the illness.”
Furthermore, some investigators have suggested that the number of new cases was leveling off and will, in fact, peak and level off in the next few weeks. One study actually picked a date (February 23); mark your calendar.
Projections from Published Numbers
The COVID-19 Calendar is based on the data provided by the British medical journal The Lancet working with data supplied to them by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and the National Health Commission (NHC) of China, among others. The Global Language Monitor is not responsible for any of the data — only with the extrapolation of the data.
Obviously, COVID-19 cannot expand indefinitely as in the extrapolation above. Typically, these pandemics either burn themselves out or a halted through Human intervention. The gravest predictions now top out at a 60% infection rate for the entire Human population. Rest assured, that that has never happened in all recorded history.
Note: Tip of the Ice Berg? These extrapolations in themselves are hypothetical and should be taken as such. These numbers assume that the number of infections has been substantially under-reported, due to a number of factors, as outlined in the Lancet article.
This data was gathered with an abundance of caution after studying the various numbers coming out of Wuhan. The projected numbers are published herein because these results have been assiduously avoided in the media in all forms.
This ThoughtTopper Institute publication was compiled by Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of the Global Language Monitor.
About Global Language Monitor
Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor is a data research organization. For more information, call +1.737.215.7750 or email Info@languageMonitor.com
For more info email info@languagemonitor.com or call Paul JJ Payack +1 737. 215.7750
AUSTIN, Texas, February 4, 2020 (Newswire.com) - The Global Language Monitor, a United States-based Big-data research firm has announced the Top Global Fashion Capitals of the Decade (2010-2019) and of the Top Global Fashion of the Year 2019. New York was named the Top Global Fashion Capitals of the Decade, while Paris takes the 2019 crown – its Third This Decade. GLM has been ranking the Top Global Fashion Capitals since 2007.
Paris Takes the 2019 Crown - Its Third This Decade
AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 4, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — The Global Language Monitor, the worldwide leader in the documentation, analysis, and tracking of trends in the English language worldwide, has announced the Top Global Fashion Capitals of the Decade (2010-2019) and of the Year 2019. New York was named the Top Global Fashion Capital of the Decade, while Paris Takes the 2019 Crown – its Third in the last 10 years. GLM has been ranking the Top Global Fashion Capitals since 2007.
It’s no surprise that
New York and Paris have continued to vie for the top spot on the rankings.
Paris won the Top Global Fashion Capital title for 2019, up from fourth place
ranking in 2018. Over the decade, New York won big with an average rank of 1.6,
finishing in first or second place every year since 2010 – earning it the
number one spot for the decade. Paris finished second for the decade with an
average rank of 2.4.
New York Vs Paris Vie For the Top Global Fashion Capital Throughoutthe Decade
London took third
place on the decade’s ranking with an average rank of 2.7, centering upon its
spectacular two-year run from 2011 to 2012, coinciding with a
highly-anticipated Olympics Game and the ever-stylish, Alexander McQueen-adorned
Kate Middleton.
Global Language Monitor has been ranking the Top Fashion Capital since 2007
“Fashion is a driving
force both economically and culturally and have an impact regionally,
country-wide and even across the world,” said Paul JJ Payack, president and
chief word analyst of the Global Language Monitor. “Structural change is here,
as reflected in the rankings. The traditional fashion capitals are holding
their own, but the emerging cities are appearing ever-more frequently
throughout the rankings.”
These burgeoning fashion
capitals include Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Barcelona, Madrid, and Berlin.
New York’s Mid-town Manhattan
The ever-increasing number
of Red Carpet events is having a growing impact. What was once reserved for the Oscars and
Emmys, now include such worthy newcomers as the Met Gala and British Oscars down
to ComicCon events and the Country Music Awards. Their impact is most readily
seen in the rise of Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
Also of note in 2019, Tel
Aviv and Tehran earned inclusion on the rankings. Tel Aviv came in at No.57 while Tehran took
the 58th spot. Tel Aviv, promoted as the “non-stop city”, has a robust public
fashion profile. Tehran, under the leadership of the Islamic state, has a hidden
yet vibrant fashion scene. The long-awaited rise of Third World fashion centers
has now arrived, Perhaps the most
dramatic example, including Lagos, which rose over three rankings from 60th to
41st.
More information about the company and its top lists can be
found at Languagemonitor.com.
About Global Language Monitor
Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language. The company is known for its Word of the Year, political analysis, college and university rankings, high-tech buzzwords, and media analytics. For more information, visit Languagemonitor.com.
The Global Language Monitor has been at the forefront of the Sustainability movement since we named Sustainable as one of our Top Words of the Year some fourteen years ago in 2006.
When GLM named the Top Words of the 21st Century, ‘Truth’ was no. 1, followed closely ‘Progress’ at No. 2. Then came ‘Sustainability’ at No. 3. Sustainability has come a long way in the last decade-and-a-half, now besting even ‘Internet’, ‘Climate Change,’ and ‘Global Warming’.
We have also been ranking the ‘Top Global Fashion Capitals’ since 2007, and have been quoted widely on sustainable, ethical, and green fashion. Our Fashion Director penned a section in Red Carpet Green Dress’ Fashion Designer’s Resource Book
Therefore in 2020, we introduced the Sustainability Rankings as part of our annual Top Global Fashion Capital rankings. The first Sustainability Rankings appear below.
About Global Language Monitor
Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language. The company is known for its Top Global Fashion Capitals, Word of the Year, political analysis, college and university rankings, high-tech buzzwords, and media analytics. For more information, visit Languagemonitor.com.
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Tokyo 2020 Top Partners Vs. Ambushers Arranged Side-by-Side
Tokyo 2020 Olympics Top Partners and Ambushers
Global Language Monitor
