Language is an interesting thing to observe and study. To master a particular language, one must have mastery of its vocabulary. That is why a dictionary is everyone's best friend. The more words you know, the better your grasp of a particular language.
But then, you'll find instances when new words are made up from time to time. Often, after a while, these new words would make their way into the dictionary. As such, language would prosper with new words.
One way in which new words are introduced is when somebody makes "productive errors." Productive errors happen when someone invents a word or a phrase that extends an existing pattern in language.
An example is extending the word "hamburger" into "fishburger" in which the latter is now an accepted word. Contrary to popular local understanding, the word "hamburger" is actually derived from the town of Hamburg in Germany where what we know as "burgers" were said to have first been made. Hamburgers are not actually burgers made of ham. You can have beef hamburgers, fish hamburgers and ham hamburgers. Unfortunately, when people started using the term "fishburgers" and "beefburgers," the word "hamburgers" start to bring a totally different connotation.
Ah, well. Such is the irony of "productive errors." They introduce new words to us, yet at the same time manage to change the original meaning of some older words. Of course, not all words derived from "productive errors" made it into the dictionary. Words like "ski-vaganza" for skiing extravaganza or "bungee-citement" for bungee-jumping excitement or "diva-formance" for diva performance never made it.
Thank goodness for that. All this talk about food makes me hungry. Ermmm... fishburgers anyone?
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