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How the Internet Is Changing Language

Ant writes "BBC News reports on how the internet is changing language. What was once understandable only to the tech savvy has become common. From the article: 'To Google' has become a universally understood verb and many countries are developing their own Internet slang. But is the Web changing language and is everyone up to speed?'"

26 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. LOL by ShakaUVM · · Score: 5, Funny

    LOL.

    And yeah, I've heard people say it IRL. I've also heard people say IRL IRL.

    1. Re:LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      wiki snip: Lol is a Dutch word (not an acronym) which, coincidentally, means "fun" ("lollig" means "funny").
      so don't blame us.

    2. Re:LOL by minasoko · · Score: 3, Funny

      I regularly say "teh" instead of "the" when speaking...

      Looking at your id, I'm expecting that most people you speak to mistake this behaviour for dementia.

  2. No. by JanneM · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "[...] is everyone up to speed?"

    No. That's the whole point of slang - you use it to show that you belong in a specific subgroup. If everyone is "up to speed" on some slang it no longer works as slang. Everyone who wants to show subgroup membership (and that's everybody, pretty much) will start using other new words and expressions instead.

    --
    Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
    1. Re:No. by JanneM · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "And on a quite global scale, enabling unprecended level of direct interboundary (interocean even) communication"

      Not as much as many native English speakers seem to want to think. Most people here in Japan, including academics and other well-educated professionals, never visit non-Japanese language websites - or if they do (some social websites or similar), only the subset that is in Japanese. And this is generally true even when their English proficiency is quite good. I saw similar behavior (though to a lesser extent) in my native Sweden some years ago.

      "Language globalization" or not, the vast majority of people around the world are most comfortable communicating in their own language, with people largely sharing their own culture. We don't really have one internet as much as a number of separate, semi-permeable internets, each with their own language, culture, trends and memes but with some high-profile stuff "leaking" between them. We may superficially seem as we're sharing the same online culture, but for every runaway meme shared by the world, you have tens, hundreds that never go beyond the particular internet where it was born.

      --
      Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
    2. Re:No. by oodaloop · · Score: 4, Funny

      Right right. Real horrorshow malenky like, these vesches are with the slobos. Like to go all ultraviolence on their litsos til the tolchoks make their rots all skorry like. You viddy?

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  3. Surely.. by zmollusc · · Score: 4, Funny

    'How teh intartubez are changing how ppl speak' ?

    --
    They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
  4. Slashdot by matt007 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    back in time : Slashdot = News for nerds, stuff that matters.
    now : Slashdot = Useless stuff, badly reported, just to get clicks.

  5. I are in ur brainz by jez9999 · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... changing ur langwigez!

  6. Keyboards by txoof · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not only has the internet changed the way some people speek, but just the common use of keyboards without the intervention of editing or editors (or thinking, sometimes) has contributed to the way we speak online, and occasionally in real life. A few examples that pop to mind are "borken," a simple transposition of the "r" and "o" in broken-- and of course thanks to the Swedish Chef. That transposition also gave us the incredibly useful word "bork" as well. The transposition "teh" has also crept into usage, usually to show some sort of derision or sarcasm.

    What other transpositions or artifacts of keyboard usage can /. come up with?

    --
    This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
    1. Re:Keyboards by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Funny

      What other transpositions or artifacts of keyboard usage can /. come up with?

      *^#%@#NO CARRIER

      I hate^h^h^h^hlike this

      ITS LIKE SHOUTING

      h tee tee pee colon slash slash slash dot dot org

    2. Re:Keyboards by RulerOf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      @martin-boundary naw dude. it's a gazillion times moar convenient to click thru a gazillion pages to read the whole conversation rather than seeing a threaded view. And the character limit is good cau

      --
      Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
  7. Re:what about by ducomputergeek · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yes, there is a perl module for that.

    --
    "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
  8. What about television? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 3, Funny

    Go back 50 years, and you will probably find the same commentary about television. How it was spreading new terms and speech patterns and what not.

    It's funny, though. I tried to Google for articles, posts and blogs about this from 50 years ago, and didn't find anything.

    Were people back 50 years ago too lazy to post crap on the Internet . . . ?

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    1. Re:What about television? by pushing-robot · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Go back 50 years, and you will probably find the same commentary about television. How it was spreading new terms and speech patterns and what not.

      Funny you mention that, since I just ran across this:

      http://sundaymagazine.org/2010/08/from-1890-the-first-text-messages/

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
  9. Re:what about by derGoldstein · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yes, there is a perl module for that.

    I'm pretty sure that --
    d0 57upid 7r4|\|5147i0|\| 14|\|gu4g35 (0u|\|7?
    is valid perl6. You don't need a module.

    --
    Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
  10. Not so much the internet as games by MichaelSmith · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My eight year old son plays the usual games in the playground but I noticed that it is now possible to pause them. The way it works in you are running around playing Tag or something and somebody says Pause and everything stops. Its a bit like time out in basketball, but for me it is directly derived from the electronic games they play which generally have a Pause function.

  11. To google.. by MoellerPlesset2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Language evolves.. but it still evolves along the same lines and 'rules' as before.
    For instance, we now have "to google" in English, but if you turn that into a French verb, it needs a French verb ending, thus "googler".
    In German you'd need an -n but "googlen" doesn't work, but by transposing the letters you can use the -eln verb ending and so you have "googeln".
    In Swedish, verbs need an -a ending, requiring the 'e' be dropped, so "googla".

    1. Re:To google.. by kumanopuusan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In Japanese, verbs often end in ru. guguru (one transliteration of Google) ends in ru and it's used as a verb. With only a handful of exceptions, all Japanese verbs are regular, so once a new verb is coined all of its many forms are used more or less naturally.

      From the verb stem (gugur-) one can derive all the other forms of the verb, including gugureba (if [one] googles), gugutta (googled), gugurimasu (google [polite]) and even gugurikata (googling technique), gugutteirassyaru (to google [exalted]), gugutteitadakereba (if [I] humbly receive the addressee's act of googling), guguritai ([I] want to google) and gugure (google [impolite imperative, similar to "Google it, motherfucker!"]).

      --
      Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
    2. Re:To google.. by locallyunscene · · Score: 4, Funny

      Your gugurikata is impressive, but it is no match for my google-fu.

  12. Re:BBC talking about changing language is irony by Xest · · Score: 4, Informative

    Are you from the UK? Some of your suggestions are just plain weird, no one in the UK says "Al-bine-izm" or "drunk driving". "BBC Sport" is a name so I fail to see what's invalid about that.

    The BBC just pronounces things the way their primary audience (i.e. the British public that funds them) speak and expect them to speak. They seem to be using the standard accepted pronunciation that everyone else here in the UK uses.

    I've never heard them say Osaka or Syracuse as they're not words that come up for any reason, but I suspect that's a clue to the fact that you're perhaps not British? If that's the case, then there's the reason you seem to think their pronunciations are abuse of language, rather than the standard accepted pronunciations of British English speaking people.

    I guess it's like how in the UK we generally call Mathematics "maths" rather than "math", and pronounce "route" closer to "root", rather than the common North American pronunciation of "rowt".

    The BBC is just using the pronunciation native to their staff, and that their primary audience- the ones who pay for their existence, the British license payer, would expect.

  13. The internet made you stupid by RivenAleem · · Score: 4, Funny

    Reminded me of this: http://i.imgur.com/MFEQB.jpg

  14. Re:Can anyone be really up to date? by rolfwind · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just read the Lolcat Bible:
    http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

    You'll turn the tables and be confusing the kids in no time.

  15. So many complaints by slackarse · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So many complaints about /. articles.

    So why do you people come back ... and waste time reading ... then wasting more time commenting?

    --
    Come to Australia so we can strip search you and rob you of your internets, pr0n, rights and freedoms.
  16. Try the real one by Moraelin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just read the real bible and you'll be confusing fundies left and right.

    And you can go for even nastier than confusing if you want. For example, find someone who's a fan of that Ezekiel 4:9 bread, and tell them that the whole recipe given by God there continues all the way to Ezekiel 4:13: "and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man". Yep, God's recipe there actually calls for human shit as an ingredient for that bread. (Though Ezekiel himself, for being so faithful and kosher all his life, gets Gods dispensation in 4:15 to eat his with cow shit instead.)

    Especially if you spring that on them after they ate some, honestly, no amount of lolcat bible can even start to compare :p

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
    1. Re:Try the real one by Eravau · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yep, God's recipe there actually calls for human shit as an ingredient for that bread.

      No... what it calls for is to use it as fuel for baking over... not as an ingredient (baking with vs. mixing with). A quick googling turns up this informational page which tells you how to make your own briquettes.