Do You Google? I Do!

I absolutely love languages. I actually speak two fluently. What I’m most fascinated with is how languages develop over time. English especially, is made up of words borrowed from many various languages and this is how many languages have developed over time.Words that didn’t even exist when I was a child are now common day words, words that have even managed to sneak their way into the Oxford English Dictionary, like photobomb, crowdfund and tweeting! The Welsh alphabet has even managed to gain a whole new letter! For those who have no idea, when I was in school there was no J now, because of words that are borrowed from other languages (like jam), there magically is and my kids think I’m bonkers to believe it hasn’t always been there!!! 

Anywho, a few weeks ago I was laying in bed at two am chatting to a good friend on messenger, as you do. If you think about it, this act in of itself is also a very new thing to do, especially for two people who spent their formative years only able to speak to friends on the phone, while sat in the living room, with the rest of the family crowded round the only TV set in the house. And only after 6pm.

But I digress, in our chat it was mentioned about the random things you google at 2am. Because let’s be honest we all do it! As is usual for me, after we had both said goodnight I lay there thinking about the word google. As a verb and when did it even become a verb? FYI officially it was June 2006

We don’t ‘yahoo’ something or ‘bing’ something and we rarely ‘search the internet’ for something! I for one say it all the time, hang on ‘I’ll just google it’.

Gone are the days where my big kids believed I knew absolutely everything. Now they just ask me to google some information (ithout even asking if I knew the answer) or come and fill me in on random facts they needed to google themselves.

Gone are the days when you had to go to the library to find out a piece of information.

Gone are the days when you hoped your mothers encyclopaedia from 1973 was up to date enough to help you with your homework. In 1993.

Gone are the days when you had to admit you might never find out the answer to something that day/week.

Gone are the days when you had to warn everyone in the house that you were going on the internet to find out something, because if they were expecting a phone call it wouldn’t come through, and they couldn’t call out.

Now we just think of query, can’t immediately find the answer in the depths of our brains, even though your sure you knew it once, then we take out our phone, tablet or laptop and google it. There and then. 

I often wonder how I ever coped without being able to google random thoughts like ‘Why isn’t Pluto a planet any more?’ and ‘when did google become a verb’ in the early hours of the morning!

I know Google don’t appreciate people saying they are googling something if they are not actually using Google, but let’s be honest, does anyone actually use other Search Engines? Apart from the two named above, I can’t even name any others!

Do you google?