I had an unfortunate experience last week. I dropped my year old iPhone (first generation) on the ground. The phone dropped face down on the ground which shattered the glass covering the screen. It cost $200 to replace the screen, so I decided to buy the next generation of the iPhone because I love it so much. Anyway, when I went into the Apple store I explained what had happened to the salesperson. He then replied, “Oh, you pancaked it.” - I laughed and went on with my purchase.

The reason I mention this story is that I was intrigued by the use of ‘pancake’ as a verb to mean drop your iPhone (or any glass faced mobile phone I imagine) directly face down on the pavement. ‘Pancake’ is not a verb I was familiar with, and I imagine it is a relatively new verb - probably less than a few years old. Perhaps the salesperson had made the verb up on the spot. The point is, I immediately understood the verb and it made perfect sense. It was a perfect example of the ‘open source’ nature of English.

I began thinking about what this means. Why is English so open to new constructs? Here is one of my hypothesis:

English adapts so readily because nouns can become verbs with little or no change made to the word.

For example:

a telephone - to telephone
a call - to call
a walk - to walk

and now…

a pancake - to pancake a phone

In the other two languages I speak, Italian and German, this transformation isn’t nearly as simple. Verbs take endings to become an infinitive in these languages:

In Italian

una chiamata - chiamare
un telefono - telefonare

In German

ein ruf - anrufen
telefon - telefonieren

Try to put these verbs into the past voice and things become more complicated. In English, you usually just add a ‘ed’.

I called you yesterday.

In Italian

Ti ho telefonato ieri.

In German

Ich habe dich gestern angerufen.

OR

Ich habe dich gestern telefoniert.

As you see, English makes minimal changes from noun to verb and then from present to past. Other languages seem to have to make larger shifts in word order, spelling, etc.

Could this be one reason why English is adaptive and has become an ‘open source’ language? What about your native language? Do nouns become verbs easily? Would you be surprised if someone came up to you and said in your native tongue: “Oh, you pancaked it.”?