PROGRAMME 6: e

In a vote, in 1998, the American Dialect Society looked for 'the new word that was most likely to succeed'. And they had an accolade "the word of the year". In that particular year, it wasn't a word at all, it was...e-! E -hyphen, the prefix, meaning electronic of course, and you'll find it in e-mail of course, these days, a lot. Well, why did they think it was going to be such a successful development? Well because in the mid-1990s they had noticed, the American Dialect Society had noticed how many people were using this e- prefix and applying it to all kinds of circumstances. And in the 1990s you got all these developments: e-books (electronic books); e-voting (electronic voting); you could get a loan from a company by e-mail, and it would be an e-loan. There were e-newsletters, e-securities, e-shopping, hundreds more. And people after a while began to play with the word - you will have heard this too: you know about retail and retailing. Well now you can have e-tail and e-tailing, because that's retail shopping over the internet. And of course it didn't take long until people started to complain about the way in which it was over-used. In fact a couple of years later, one of the big internet magazines said, "this is a word, this is a prefix that has to go!” everybody is using it too much. Well, it hasn't gone - it's here to stay. E-speak is the future! hyphen - pomlčka apply - aplikovat, používat e-books, voting, loan, newsletters - elektronické knihy, hlasování, půjčka, securities - informační buletin, akcie retail/ e-tail - obchod v drobném to complain - stěžovat si over-used - zneužívat that has to go - musí zmizet