Global Language Monitor
The Global Language Monitor (GLM) is a company based in Austin, Texas that collectively documents, analyzes, and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language. It is particularly known for its Word of the Year, political analysis, college and university rankings, High Tech buzzwords, and media analytics. History. Founded in Silicon Valley in 2003 by Paul J.J. Payack, the GLM describes its role as "a media analytics company that documents, analyzes and tracks cultural trends in language the world over, with a particular emphasis upon International and Global English". GLM's  main services include various products based on the Narrative Tracker 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, the top 275,000 print and electronic global media, as well as new social media sources as they emerge. In April 2008, GLM moved its headquarters from San Diego to Austin. In July 2020, GLM announced that 'Covid' was the Top Word of 2020 for Global or International English. 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’ 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. Covid-19 is ranked No. 2. 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. Typically, the Global Language Monitor ranks words, phrases, and names  on three separate lists, and the lists are limited to twenty items. For this effort, GLM has combined the lists and extended the word count to fifty items. Other recently released word-lists include: Top Words, Stories, Phrases and Names of the Decade. The Top Words of the Decade from 2000 to 2009 were headed by Global Warming. The Top Words of the Decade from 2000–2009 Word / Year / Comments The Top Stories of the decade from 2000-2009 Rank/News Story/Comment The Top Phrases of the Decade from 2000–2009 Word/Year/Comments Annual fashion capital rankings. 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. Commentary from Global Language Monitor About the 2017 edition of its annual fashion capital rankings. 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. Commentary from Global Language Monitor individual cities in the 2017 edition. No. 3 Barcelona — Moving into Big Four Territory is Big News by definition. 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). 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). No. 7 Amsterdam — Moving up 15 spots is quite a move. No. 9 Vegas — Back in the Top Ten, more evidence that the Red Carpet experience does indeed have an impact. No. 10 Dubai — More evidence that billions of dollars Do, indeed, have an impact. No. 17 Seoul — Finally making the move in Asia, not No. 1, but a respectable  No. 3 regionally. No. 21 Washington, DC — A move into respectability!? No. 28 Melbourne and No. 34 Sydney — Trading Places No. 44 Portland, OR — A very nice debut. No. 47 Kuala Lumpur — Another solid debut. No. 46 Boston, No. 48 Miami, No.53 Chicago, No. 54 Houston, and No. 59 Toronto — All down by twenty spots, or more. No. 63 Caracas — On Hiatus due to Insurrection. 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. High tech terms. On March 29, 2013 announced The Most Confusing High Tech Buzzwords of the Second Decade of the 21st century, thus far (2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013) with commentary follow: 2013 Rank , Buzzword, Last Year’s rank The study was released in conjunction with Austin's South by Southwest Interactive festival. On March 17, 2010, the Global Language Monitor presented the Most Confusing High Tech Buzzwords of the first decade of the 21st century (2000–2009). On November 19, 2008 Global Language Monitor announced the most confusing yet frequently cited high tech buzzwords of 2008 to be cloud computing, green washing, and buzzword compliant followed by resonate, de-duping, and virtualization. Rounding out the Top Ten were Web 2.0, versioning, word clouds, and petaflop. The most confusing Acronym for 2008 was SaaS (software  as a service). On 14 October 2007 GLM released a list of the most confusing high tech terms and buzzwords. The words included: "iPod", "flash", "cookie", "nano" and "kernel", followed by "megahertz", "cell" (as in "cell phone"), "plasma", "de-duplication" and "Blu-Ray". Other terms being tracked included "terabyte", "memory", "core", and "head crash". The most confusing acronym was found to be SOA, for service-oriented architecture, an acronym which IBM published a book about. The studies were released each year on the anniversary of the "cookie," the invention that made the World Wide Web practical for widespread surfing, communication , and e-commerce. Counting English words. GLM announced the 1,000,000th English word on June 10, 2009. This controversial exercise was widely covered in the global media. The count itself was widely criticized by a number of prominent linguists, including Geoffrey Nunberg, and Jesse Sheidlower and Benjamin Zimmer, on the grounds that since there is no generally accepted definition of a word, there can never be a definitive count. The finalists, which met the criteria of a minimum of 25,000 citations with the necessary breadth of geographic distribution and depth of citations, were: 1. Web 2.0. 2. Jai Ho! 3. N00b . 4. Slumdog. 5. Cloud computing. 6. Carbon Neutral. 7. Slow Food. 8. Octomom. 9. Greenwashing. 10. Sexting. 11. Shovel ready. 12. Defriend. 13. Chengguan. 14. Recessionista. 15. Zombie Banks. Critics noted that the target date had been changed a number of times from late in 2006 to early in 2009. It was also criticized on grounds that a count is impossible because "word" is not a scientifically valid concept. Google addressed this situation by counting the words in the 15 million scanned texts in their corpus. Global Language Monitor states the general criteria for inclusion on its site, maintaining that  it is simply updating the established criteria for printed dictionaries beginning with the works of Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster. The New York Times quoted Paul JJ Payack as saying that the PQI is "an algorithm that tracks words and phrases in the media and on the Internet in relation to frequency, context and appearance in global media. It is a weighted index that takes into account year-to-year increases and acceleration in the last several months". In general terms, GLM describes its Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI), used to run its analytics on global language trends and, as a  weighted index, factoring in long-term trends, short-term changes, momentum and velocity, using frequency data on words and phrases in the global print and electronic media, on the Internet, and throughout the blogosphere, as well as in proprietary databases (Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, etc.). It can also create "signals" that can be used in a variety of applications. Obama an English language word. On 20 February 2008 GLM announced that the latest word to enter the English language was "obama", derived from Barack Obama, in its many variations. GLM described Obama- as a "root" for words including obamanomics, obamican, obamamentum , obamacize, obamarama, obamaNation, Obamafy, obamamania and obamacam. GLM announced it to be an accepted word, once it met the group's published criteria: a minimum of 25,000 citations in the global media, as well as achieving the necessary 'breadth' and 'depth' of citations. Top US Colleges and University Rankings. The Global Language Monitor publishes other lists relating to the English language including: the TrendTopper MediaBuzz College Guide rankings of the top 425 U.S. colleges and universities according to their internet brand equity. Top Universities (January 2016): Rank/University/Previous Ranking Top Universities Last Top 50 US Colleges by TrendTopper MediaBuzz  2016. Rank/College/Previous Ranking Top US Colleges by Category. and 15 Top All-Time Bushisms, and many others.