deathmtn

I don't think anyone has reliable information about post-2021 language usage by humans.

The open Web (via OSCAR) was one of wordfreq's data sources. Now the Web at large is full of slop generated by large language models, written by no one to communicate nothing. Including this slop in the data skews the word frequencies.

Sure, there was spam in the wordfreq data sources, but it was manageable and often identifiable. Large language models generate text that masquerades as real language with intention behind it, even though there is none, and their output crops up everywhere.

As one example, Philip Shapira reports that ChatGPT (OpenAI's popular brand of generative language model circa 2024) is obsessed with the word "delve" in a way that people never have been, and caused its overall frequency to increase by an order of magnitude.

Irish Travellers speak English and sometimes one of two dialects of Shelta — Gammon (or Gamin) and Irish Traveller Cant. Shelta has been dated back to the 18th century but may be older.[37] Cant, which derives from Irish, is a combination of English and Shelta.[38]

…

Shelta is a cryptolect (secret language). Irish Travellers do not like to share the language with outsiders, named "Buffers", or non-Travellers. When speaking Shelta in front of Buffers, Travellers will disguise the structure so as to make it seem like they are not speaking Shelta at all.[42] There is fear that if outsiders know the entirety of the language, it will be used to bring further discrimination to the Traveller community.[43]

Fans of ultra-viral mobile gaming hit Flappy Bird who were stunned by the game's sudden removal from the iOS App Store 10 years ago were probably even more stunned by last week's equally sudden announcement that Flappy Bird is coming back with a raft of new characters and game modes. Unfortunately, the new version of Flappy Bird seems to be the result of a yearslong set of legal maneuvers by a crypto-adjacent game developer intent on taking the "Flappy Bird" name from the game's original creator, Dong Nguyen.

"No, I have no related with their game. I did not sell anything," Nguyen wrote on social media over the weekend in his first post since 2017. "I also don't support crypto," Nguyen added.

…

So how can another company release a game named Flappy Bird without Nguyen's approval or sale of the rights? Court filings show that a company called Gametech Holdings filed a "notice of opposition" against Nguyen with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in late 2023, seeking to invalidate his claim on the "Flappy Bird" name. When Nguyen, who lives in Vietnam, didn't respond to that notice by November, the US Patent and Trademark Office entered a default judgment against him and officially canceled his trademark in January, allowing Gametech to legally claim the name.

But Gametech's efforts to legally acquire the Flappy Bird name seem to go back much further than that. Back in 2014, an outfit called Mobile Media Partners tried to claim the Flappy Bird trademark in a filing made mere days after Nguyen pulled the game from the App Store. Coincidentally enough, the specific New Jersey address listed by Mobile Media Partners on that 2014 application matches an address used by Gametech Holdings in the paperwork for its 2023 legal efforts.