How do you think the Internet has changed the English Language?
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05-27-2014, 05:00 PM
Post: #7
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I studied this for a presentation I had to do in school and this is what I came up with:
It has created many new technical terms, but it has also given new additional meanings to already existing words. Some examples are online, offline, connection, network, virus, sharing... you get the gist. It has, together with texting created a whole bunch of new abbreviations LOL (Laughing out loud), FYI (For your information) U (you), B4 (Before). These are useful because they allow faster typing and less characters which is useful for chatting and social networking sites such as twitter where you only have a limited amount of characters for each post. Emoticons (smilies) (^__^) (T__T) :'( They did not exist, in this form and with the same type of wide usage before the internet. I think the reason people use them so much is because they help show the true intention or emotion the writer is trying to convey in their message. A comment on a blog post such as: "You're so smart!" could perhaps be interpreted differently when it is written "You're so smart! " than "You're so smart! " Irony and sarcasm could be difficult to convey in written text sometimes and the emoticons perhaps helps the reader interpret the text. Punctuation has changed too, or it is used more freely online such as using several exclamation marks (excitement), question marks (bewilderment) and periods. I think a lot of spelling errors occur more often online than in real life as well such as "your" and "you're" and "then" and "than". Online we are all influenced by each other, those who are influenced the most are those who are not quite sure how to spell I guess, so they just take after others who misspell. There are new text types and forms of communication; blogs (diaries used to be private, right?), instant messaging, the ability to share text, film and photos in real time. Language has to do with communication and this is probably one of the most influential aspects of the internet that has affected English, and other languages all over the world. I think one misconception of the Internet's influence on language change is that it has entirely and drastically changed and evolved the English language, which in my opinion it has not. In real life we do not (most of the time) speak in appreciations, nor do we write novels like "& I LOLed @ Ur mom 4 B-ing pwned by a N00b" (sorry I suck at writing in internet slang) this might seem pretty obvious, but still! So as a whole the English language remains the same, and I think most of the changes can only be seen online. This is all I could think of, I hope it helped! I also recommend you watch this video, I saw this and got lots of info and inspiration for my presentation, so I'm sure you'll learn something from it as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2XVdDSJHqY |
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Messages In This Thread |
How do you think the Internet has changed the English Language? - Sarah - 05-27-2014, 04:07 PM
[] - cedorsmulas - 05-27-2014, 04:14 PM
[] - sheetwowsheet - 05-27-2014, 04:33 PM
[] - ブタウサギ - 05-27-2014 05:00 PM
[] - Vlad the Inhaler - 05-27-2014, 05:04 PM
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