Blog 14 - BKA (Better Known As)...

In the new computer age, young people are beginning to develop and cultivate a new form of language: so called “net-lingo.” To all the e-mailers and IMers reading this, you all know the meanings of various abbreviations like lol, btw, and rofl among many, many others. These shorthand methods using abbreviations seem to have risen out of a desire to be more efficient at the computer and spend less time typing to convey a message. These abbreviations and the choppy language seem to leaking into more formal writing. Even in schools, some people have begun to notice “more of these abbreviations creeping into students’ answer sheets” and into formal writing. However, people who aren’t acquainted with this “net-lingo” seem perturbed by this unconscious and instinctive use of casual abbreviation. As with everything, there is a time and place for “net-lingo” and there’s also a time and place for more formal language and constructions.

Which leads to the interesting fact that people talk differently when they talk to different people. I find myself doing this often. When I talk to friends from within the city of Boston, I relax my language immensely and let the beast of my Boston accent out of its cage. However, when I talk to friends of mine from the suburbs, I retighten my language, and speak without a discernable accent (I think/hope). This shift is entirely subconscious and instinctive. I’m not trying to speak differently; I just do. I notice my mom doing similar things. My mother knows more than 5 languages, 3 of which are Indian languages and Hindi is her native tongue. When she speaks English to Americans she speaks without almost any accent, only occasionally using British-English intonations and pronunciations (for example, she says Aah-loo-min-ium instead of Ah-loo-min-um). But, when she talks to other Indians, she speaks English with a massive Indian accent, which you might expect Apu to use on the Simpsons. I asked her about that shift once, and she was actually unaware of it. People do the same thing by switching between languages automatically. When I talk to my parents in Hindi, I don’t do so consciously. I think several people in class have mentioned encountering this phenomenon in their own experiences. But I guess a lot of people haven’t yet developed the skills or instinct to use more formal language when it’s appropriate. Instead, because some people are so accustomed to typing without capital letters or with crazy abbreviations, they type accordingly in all messages that they write on the computer, whether they’re writing an email to their friends or to their teachers.

I think another interesting aspect to this new “net-lingo” is that in some ways, people are reshaping English by their use of the Internet. There are even dictionaries for all of the abbreviations used in emails and messages (including one’s which I’ve never heard of and would never use, like GSYJDWYMH, which apparently means Good Seeing You, Just Don’t Wear Your Monkey Hat; I don’t get it either). There’s currently a fairly standardized set of abbreviations and abbreviating techniques, but on the Internet the youth is revolutionizing these techniques and processes. Fortunately, as the Hindu article notes, “The language [of English] is unlikely to ‘lose’ anything by the new changes, though. ‘The resilience and adaptability of English is its strength.”




http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/11/stories/2007111150890200.htm
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/abbreviations.htm
http://www.netlingo.com/emailsh.cfm