Updation

If you check the dictionary you will see an entry for the word updation. But look closely at the definition. I quote: Usage: informal. That's a polite way of saying this is not really a word.

But google it and you'll find that it is everywhere. One of the top search results has it right: Updation is not a word. But this is clearly a losing battle, since it is undeniable that the sane among us are vastly outnumbered by those who are totally oblivious to the way they are degrading language.

The consensus out there is that this abomination comes from the world of databases. I can just see the brain-storming session in my head. The room full of geniuses is making a list of the operations that the new Database Solution must support. There's INSERTION. Yes! Very important, that one. Anyone else? Anyone? DELETION. Excellent. OK, I think this is as good a time as any to break for lunch. Abrubtly, from the back of the room: UPDATION! Great, I really feel that we have closed the loop on this, people. Symmetry trumps any faintly lingering desire for sanity or correctness.

This kind of symmetry or overgeneralization is a stage of language acquisition. Children who are learning their native tongue eventually pass through this stage as they pick up the complexities and exceptions in the language: they will learn to say went instead of goed.

People learning a second language pass through some of the same stages, including overgeneralization, as do children learning their native language. However, people rarely become as fluent in a second language as in their native tongue. Some linguists see the earliest years of childhood as a critical period, after which the brain loses much of its facility for assimilating new languages.

Question: can we conclude that the people who spew Business Speak have only a vague, toddler-like grasp of language? That they somehow speak their native tongue as if it is a second language?