The Bastardization of the English Language Thru Web 2.0 - A study
When we got our physics lab report back in grade 12 there was one sentence circled in red “we installed the measurement devise to take readings…” next to the sentence our witty teacher commented “humans must devise a device that checks for spelling as well as context.”
It has been about 5 years since then, and we’re in need of the “device” more urgently than ever. All one needs to do is look around to see how spelling is getting butchered left and right. MSN (and now facebook and twitter) culture is raising a generation of people who try to condense their thoughts into a sentence or two, using every mean of spelling butchering available. Every time a clever bastardization of a word is seen it spreads like wildfire and becomes the standard in techno lingo. To illustrate I took 4 sekonds on facebook to find the falowing comments on a pic of some1’s mantion (note: no dramatization added):
- what a baller
this is mad balling
i think i must change the pic casue i am going blind from the insane ballign- I think you can afford to pay me back that $5 from last summa homie...sheeeeeeeeet LoL
- wooow dats so beautiful!! is that ur house?
- LOL I Wish!...Soon 2 Be Tho!
Wa halluma jarran
Another word bastardization that I find particularly annoying is the replacement of “love” with “heart.” At least when people use shitty abbreviations of words they’re being lazy, and that’s respectable. But when you replace “love” with “heart” you’re trying to be cool, and sadly failing at it. I especially notice the replacement in facebook status updates, as in “I heart my new car.” I shudder to think of this becoming a trend where people replace words with symbol words such as “I heart my brain husband” for “I love my smart husband” or pushed one step further “I heart my brain ring.”
And why does replacing a “c” with a “k” make a word so much kooler?
While we’re on the topic of kool, I’m ashamed to admit that my post “mY mSn NaMe iS sO toTalLY kOOl!!” is one of my most popular. It continues to rake in the hits despite the fact that I wrote it 3.5 yEaRs AgO. In all this gloom there's light at the end of the tunnel.
Ne way, its gettin late and I better hit the sack… BRB
Related Posts:
Street Lingo 101
Lingo Lesson 2
Lingo Lesson 3
Street Lingo 104 - Mastering Your Son and Daughter's Language
Labels: criticism, culture, technology
posted by x @ 10:56 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
At 4/05/2009 5:32 PM,
Isobel said…
Yes, this is kind of a scary trend. I think its okay if you have learned how to spell correctly, but for kids this could really become a problem. My biggest pet peeve is grammar...if you think spelling has taken a hit...check out the poor grammar that has come from this texting, etc. Great post!!
At 4/06/2009 3:33 PM,
poshlemon said…
Excellent post :) I enjoyed reading every bit of it. Mainly because it mirrors my disappointment in how this generation has violated and degraded the English language. Since language is a main means of communication, it reflects a lot on how we think and behave and even how cultured we are.
Oh well...
Keep these posts coming.
At 4/06/2009 8:28 PM,
x said…
Thank you for coming by Isobel :) What you said is very true. Texting is whole different can of worms. At least with spelling we can partly blame spell check, but with grammar what do we have to blame?
Poshlemon! nice to see you again. You hit the nail on the head. The popularity of books like Twilight written at a grade 2 level shows how far we've made it down this path of culture.
At 4/08/2009 9:24 AM,
Ted said…
I asked my son what language we speak in the states and he said "American".
www.pafundi.com
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Number of Operations Iraq Freedom and Enduring Freedom casualties
as confirmed by U.S. Central Command: 4916
At 12/18/2010 1:38 PM,
Anonymous said…
The bastardization of the English language is truly disturbing. I find that the use of acronyms for words are the representation of a generation whose attention span is markedly decreasing by substantial amounts. This is possibly because technology is making the millennial generation into one that "multi-tasks." Now multitasking is not a bad thing, but it does increase the risk of distraction, which then reduces the attention span to that comparable of a rodent.
My greatest fear is when Webster recognizes these bastardizations as actual words and begins adding "lol" into their dictionary.
At 6/18/2012 11:01 AM,
Anonymous said…
I love it! You are so correct.
Trying to be Politically Correct (or lazy PC) is also contributing to this demise. Have a kid? Notice that almost every article written about children now uses “her” in place of “him” for generic identification of a person? That or goes back and forth between “his” and “hers”. Are we talking about two different people now?
Come on! Are you really that worried about sex identification (even though “his” has been understood for hundreds of years to be sexless when used in a generic sense)? Fine! Construct the difficult sentences required to totally remove the pronoun. Or just say “its”!
Can’t say “white”, “black”, “oriential” anymore….as if the mere description of an obvious feature is racist. Hey, I am tall – better not try to point me out by saying “the tall black guy over there”. No, no….use some English bastardization like “that queer looking dude over there”…..oh but wait… Even words like “queer” that should be perfectly acceptable have been obliterated from their intended use.
But what should we expect in a society where teachers are discouraged from actually correcting their students. My son’s teacher last year never said “that is incorrect”. Oh no. She simply “disagreed”.
So who is to say that the English language is being bastardized? Perhaps it is simply evolving and those of us who think we know better should shut up and start abbreviating, substituting, and being PC. Hey, it worked for 15th century Brits who all did basically their own thing.
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