11–20 of 61 posts
Yeah kids talk funny nowadays! Not really,... it's always been like that with children. It is disturbing how many adults do it, trying to act 'cool' and talking like that.
Why is it disturbing? Sometimes we pick up colloquialisms unconsciously, and besides, one cannot and should not try to resist societal change indefinitely.
books like this always seem so superficial. the internet did not create people’s want to play with language. it maybe acted as a catalyst, but the fundamental nature of humans being playful with language has always been around. i learned this through an interview with noam chomsky. he mentioned that the fastest moving languages are usually the more local, village or tribal like languages, that these people are very p…
books like this always seem so superficial. the internet did not create people’s want to play with language. it maybe acted as a catalyst, but the fundamental nature of humans being playful with language has always been around. i learned this through an interview with noam chomsky. he mentioned that the fastest moving languages are usually the more local, village or tribal like languages, that these people are very p…
Pidgeon, spoken in alot of the islands nations, is used as a bridge like language for local dialects. IMO its the first example of what this book is referring too.
Note that some languages that are collquially refered to as pidgins, aren't (e.g. Tok Pisin).
books like this always seem so superficial. the internet did not create people’s want to play with language. it maybe acted as a catalyst, but the fundamental nature of humans being playful with language has always been around. i learned this through an interview with noam chomsky. he mentioned that the fastest moving languages are usually the more local, village or tribal like languages, that these people are very p…
Pidgeon, spoken in alot of the islands nations, is used as a bridge like language for local dialects. IMO its the first example of what this book is referring too.
https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/186456220892/reviews-of...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All the factors you mention are true of course, but I'm not sure any of them really explain it. In my mind the Internet is something like a skate park for language, where you have this global infrastructure for developing, rewarding, and disseminating new tricks. Just increasing the volume of people writing books and letters doesn't get you K5 or 4chan.
New tricks? I feel like in the past, everyone had language tricks. Speaking in fun ways, clever one liners and turns of phrase of the type Mark Twain or Churchill would employ were commonplace. People didn’t have videogames, facebook and other stuff to amuse themselves, or express themselves through. They found ways to do it through language. Just pick up any book that captures how people spoke in the 19th and first…
That's a point I personally disagree with. My impression is that exclamation points typically serve as indicators of an older, rather than younger author, especially if they're included in a joke. If someone sends you a meme or copypasta that ends in an exclamation point it's almost always boomer humor. "Because Jill's real name is Randy!" etc.
>Or make that “hey!!!!!” Exclamation points, unlike the period, have so far escaped obsolescence in customarily punctuation-free online interaction; if anything, they’ve been cheapened by overuse, That's a point I personally disagree with. My impression is that exclamation points typically serve as indicators of an older, rather than younger author, especially if they're included in a joke. If someone sends you a mem…
Separating actual language from things like orthography is important here. I'm not sure language itself has changed at a significantly different rate than in the past. Internet communication environments do favour changing orthographic norms, which is still interesting, but not the same thing as language change.