Why Has Language Changed So Much So Fast? ‘Because Internet’
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Re: Why Has Language Changed So Much So Fast? ‘Because Internet’
#2Is pseudolus a bot? Is pseudolus a staff member?
Look at the shit @pseudolus posts. It reads like a mouthpiece for all the common, vanilla news and infotainment outlets.
Is this a karma whoring thing, or is it just a ycombinator entity to de-duplicate and push the less diverse votes onto one particular user id?
It's like this user just posts all the science and technology links from every major news site out there.
I don't really care much about the monopoly money of karma, but I really am kind of tired of the high ratio of brain dead obvious pop culture "news" articles for high schoolers that are less than stimulating.
Re: Why Has Language Changed So Much So Fast? ‘Because Internet’
#3Its interesting- at first blush I would think that the internet would slow down language evolution by linking together communities in a way that prevents that natural genetic drift of languages between nearby towns with limited intertown travel from happening. Instead, the constraints and form of the medium has created an explosion in linguistic evolution and growth. What an exciting linguistic time to be alive!
Re: Why Has Language Changed So Much So Fast? ‘Because Internet’
#4Unfortunately the review doesn't address this but there are multiple factors that can explain this while keeping the mutation rate of language the same.
It may be hard to separate the 3 factors that come to mind:
1. higher volume of communication. (more people than ever write/read more than ever)
2. lower bar for observable/written down communication. (anybody can write publicly/permanently)
3. faster transmission of previously local slang. (more groups that previously would have kept their slang to themselves are interacting than ever, e.g. your non black friends ruining the word "ratchet" before 2014 ended)
and by slang here, I mean both verbal and grammatical
Re: Why Has Language Changed So Much So Fast? ‘Because Internet’
#5Unfortunately the review doesn't address this but there are multiple factors that can explain this while keeping the mutation rate of language the same. It may be hard to separate the 3 factors that come to mind: 1. higher volume of communication. (more people than ever write/read more than ever) 2. lower bar for observable/written down communication. (anybody can write publicly/permanently) 3. faster transmission of…
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.
Re: Why Has Language Changed So Much So Fast? ‘Because Internet’
#6Its interesting- at first blush I would think that the internet would slow down language evolution by linking together communities in a way that prevents that natural genetic drift of languages between nearby towns with limited intertown travel from happening. Instead, the constraints and form of the medium has created an explosion in linguistic evolution and growth. What an exciting linguistic time to be alive!
Yes.
Re: Why Has Language Changed So Much So Fast? ‘Because Internet’
#7books 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 playful with language because they aren’t bound by rules. it was the introduction of national languages like german, french, mandarin, etc. that slowed the evolution and playfulness of languages in those regions, which have many dialects that are sort of dying out.
Re: Why Has Language Changed So Much So Fast? ‘Because Internet’
#8Yeah 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.
Re: Why Has Language Changed So Much So Fast? ‘Because Internet’
#9Unfortunately the review doesn't address this but there are multiple factors that can explain this while keeping the mutation rate of language the same. It may be hard to separate the 3 factors that come to mind: 1. higher volume of communication. (more people than ever write/read more than ever) 2. lower bar for observable/written down communication. (anybody can write publicly/permanently) 3. faster transmission of…
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 part of the 20th century. Language was sport.
Re: Why Has Language Changed So Much So Fast? ‘Because Internet’
#10Yeah 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.