9/11 Never Forgetten

American history was forever altered on Sept. 11, 2001, when thousands of people lost their lives at the hands of terrorists.
But there was a lesser-known change that was additionally initiated that day - a modification to English language, one that has caught the attention of linguists and formed the way we talk about terrorist attacks.

The surprising effect 9/11 had on the English language

The innovation is that the easy term "9/11," that Americans use to talk to both the date of the attacks and also the attacks themselves.

While the term may not seem terribly special at first glance, "9/11" - pronounced "nine eleven" - defies the way Americans generally refer to calendar dates. Our Independence Day|July 4|legal holiday|national holiday} is "July Fourth" or the "Fourth of July," but ne'er "seven four."
It also defies however we generally talk about disasters - we keep in mind "Pearl Harbor," but not essentially "12/7." The reasoning for this can be pretty clear: The Sept. 11 attacks took place in multiple locations, therefore it might be difficult to come up with a single term that encompasses the whole thing.

Linguists were quick to pick up on the unusual construction: The american dialect Society, a group of linguists and language specialists, named "9/11" its 2001 Word of the Year for its widespread popularity. interestingly, the term caught on worldwide, even in countries wherever dates are generally written within the day-month format.

In the coming years, a handful of different major terrorist incidents got the calendric treatment, including the 2005 London bombings ("7/7") and also the 2004 Madrid bombings ("11-M," referring to March 11).

Appropriately, as Adrienne LaFrance wrote for Medium in 2013, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks by their date helps Americans keep their collective promise to "never forget" them.

" using calendric shorthand to refer to a disaster seems inherently a part of this push to remember, because knowing an event by its date is in itself a means of ensuring commemoration," she wrote.