Ten years ago, no one had heard of "H1N1", "Web 2.0", "n00b", or talked about "de-friending" someone on "Twitter" or "Facebook". Now these are part of people's everyday vocabulary.

The world is changing. Inevitably, so are our words.

The English language is going through an explosion of word creation. New words are coined - some, like "n00b", may not even look like words; old words take on new meanings - "twitter" today bears little relation to the Middle English twiteren. According to the Global Language Monitor (GLM), in 2009 the English language tipped the scales with a vocabulary of one million words. Not good news for the 250 million people acquiring English in China.