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How do you think the Internet has changed the English Language?
05-27-2014, 04:07 PM
Post: #1
How do you think the Internet has changed the English Language?
Generally interested!

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05-27-2014, 04:14 PM
Post: #2
 
There are certainly many English speakers on here who can't distinguish between SIMPLE words in their own language... it's sad really.

Words like:-

to and too
there, their and they're
your and you're
dose and does
no and know
were and where
lose and loose
than and then

I don't think it's the fault of the internet, just sloppy teaching.

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05-27-2014, 04:21 PM
Post: #3
 
The internet actually made it possible for the english language to spread (even more than before).
I learned it myself thanks to the internet.
Of course I do some mistakes, but I don't think it really hurts the language, or internet is the reason why it would change.
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05-27-2014, 04:33 PM
Post: #4
 
It's certainly dumbed down the English language. Even on this forum, some of the postings are so bad, it's becoming more and more difficult to understand what is being asked. Poor parenting, poor teaching and allowing poor written language at schools is certainly a factor but there are few constraints on the internet and some elements of society would appear to have their own 'pidgin' English. The only problem with that, is that sooner or later, they will find it harder to gain good employment with poorly written CVs and, as a knock-on effect, poorly spoken English too.
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05-27-2014, 04:48 PM
Post: #5
 
When people use the internet for FB or use Twitter etc. they cheat by not spelling all the words correctly. They have come up with an abbreviation of almost everything.

If this trend continues why would anyone need to learn how to spell at all as no one would be using the correct way to spell words. They would all have their own way to spell. Maybe not such a good idea as their way of spelling could be undecipherable to anyone trying to read it.

Some people have become lazy, simple as that.
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05-27-2014, 04:50 PM
Post: #6
 
It gets on my nerves when people say "your" instead of "you're"
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05-27-2014, 05:00 PM
Post: #7
 
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) Smile Sad Wink Big Grin (^__^) (T__T) :'( Tongue
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! Big Grin" than "You're so smart! Tongue" 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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05-27-2014, 05:04 PM
Post: #8
 
Interesting question. I think its best looked at from the other side, how has the English language formed the internet.
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