How an eight year old with the help of social media invented a new word
Ever wondered how to create a new word? Ever thought how difficult it would be to actually get that ‘created’ word officiated? Ever thought if the translation to another language would make sense at all? Well an eight year old primary school student named Matteo has done just that. The story reported on BBC trending is of an Italian primary school teacher Margherita Aurora who is from the small commune Copparo of Emilia-Romagna. Margherita notices a word that has no official meaning written in Matteo’s school assignment.
The word in question used by the eight year old was “petaloso” which is a word he uses to describe a blooming flower. Petaloso would be the Italian translation of explaining that the flower is “full of petals” which actually makes complete grammatical sense as it is the combination of the Italian word for petal “petalo” with the suffix “-oso” which is translated into “full of”. Although the word is functional there was no official meaning to it in the Italian dictionary.
There does exist a direct English translation for the word “petaloso”, “petalous” is the direct and fast translation, a word that has been used from the 18th century. The absence of this word from the Italian dictionary gave Margherita the idea that her student Matteo had invented a new word. With the help and encouragement of Margherita, Matteo wrote to the Accademia della Crusca, an Italian language institute created in 1583, to get their opinion about the word.
They got a positive reply from one of the Crusca’s top language experts who replied, “The word you invented is well formed and could be used in the Italian language,” and “It is beautiful and clear.” But also warned that in order to be considered an official word of the Italian language, a number of the population must first need to understand it and use the word “petaloso”, the word must be spread and only then could it be considered and official Italian word.
Margherita was so moved by the Crusca’s linguist replay that she shared the images of the letter accompanied with the caption “this is worth more than a thousand Italian lessons” on Facebook which rather unexpectedly triggered a campaign to make “petaloso” an official word. This post has been shared more than 80,000 times on Facebook and on Twitter #petaloso has been used more than 40,000 times which saw it become a trending topic in Italy and briefly made an appearance in the top worldwide trend.
The Crusca joined the campaign by retweeting the word as well as the Zanichelli publishing house who are the publishers of Italy’s most used dictionaries, they even talked about the possibility of “petaloso” being included in the next edition. Also Rome’s tourist authorities advertised the city’s rose garden as the “petaloso” rose garden. Even the Italian Prime Minister recognised Matteo’s efforts and congratulated him.
This story just goes to show the importance of social media, that one eight year olds imaginative word could now be close to being considered as an official word.
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