'Jai Ho', 'Slumdog' top Hollywood words

New York, Feb 27 (IANS) Danny Boyle's underdog drama "Slumdog Millionaire" that took the Oscars by storm has also given the words "Jai ho" and "Slumdog", which have topped a survey as terms that most influenced the English Language in 2008.

In the sixth annual survey by the Global Language Monitor the words - "Jai ho" and "Slumdog" have topped the list.

"Jai ho" is the title of a song in "Slumdog Millionaire", which won composer A.R. Rahman and lyricist Gulzar the best original song Oscar. "Slumdog" is the metaphoric title of the film for an underdog from the slums coined by screenwriter Simon Beaufoy.

"2008 was a remarkable year for words in films, with a Hindi phrase, the name of a Laotian tribe, a West African drum, and a modified quotation from Frederick Nietzsche all making the list," said Paul J.J. Payack, president and chief word analyst of the Global Language Monitor, on the official website www.languagemonitor.com.

It was the first time that two words from the same movie were ranked in the Top Ten.

Closely following the two words are "Hmong" from "Gran Torino", "Nuke the Fridge" from "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" and "Twinkie defense", which followed the events depicted in "Milk".

Rounding out the Top Ten are "Djembe" ("The Visitor"), "There are no coincidences" ("Kung Fu Panda"), "What doesn't kill you makes you? stranger," ("The Dark Knight"), "Posthumous" ("The Wrestler") and "Katrina" from "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button".

The Global Language Monitor uses a proprietary algorithm - the Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI) to track the frequency of words and phrases in the global print and electronic media, on the Internet, throughout the blogosphere as well as accessing proprietary databases.

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