by Charis Nandor
Charis is a student at Bryn Mawr College, where she is completing her major in Linguistics. You can watch her video here.
Charis is a student at Bryn Mawr College, where she is completing her major in Linguistics. You can watch her video here.
Because Internet.
Internet Linguistics, while not actually being its own field of linguistics (yet) is starting to be a popular thing to study. People use words differently on the Internet. Punctuation is important in a way that’s more obvious than in spoken language. Even syntax (word order) can be different on the Internet.
For example, in spoken language, up to a few years ago, it would be entirely ungrammatical for someone to say “*I want this because reasons.” They would have to say, “I want this because of reasons.” However, this structure became acceptable on the Internet, and now it’s actually spread into spoken language (albeit mostly among frequent Internet-users).
For example, in spoken language, up to a few years ago, it would be entirely ungrammatical for someone to say “*I want this because reasons.” They would have to say, “I want this because of reasons.” However, this structure became acceptable on the Internet, and now it’s actually spread into spoken language (albeit mostly among frequent Internet-users).
“Blefadula” is Not a Word.
Of course, because language contains so many parts, I couldn’t focus on all aspects of language. I decided to specifically focus on one of the simplest things for a broad audience to understand—words. Everyone knows what a word is. “Happy” is a word. “Blefadula” is not a word. And then, it gets more complicated than that. For some people, yinz is a word. Other people might have no idea what that means, and say it definitely isn’t a word. (For reference, “yinz” is a Pittsburgh term meaning “you guys” or “y’all”.)
The same thing happens with Internet words. While I, an avid Tumblr user, feel perfectly comfortable with doggo or snek, my parents would have no idea what these mean. One of the interesting things to me about Internet words is that they’re often very similar to “regular” English words. In this case, “doggo” is a large, cute dog and “snek” is a cute snake.
The same thing happens with Internet words. While I, an avid Tumblr user, feel perfectly comfortable with doggo or snek, my parents would have no idea what these mean. One of the interesting things to me about Internet words is that they’re often very similar to “regular” English words. In this case, “doggo” is a large, cute dog and “snek” is a cute snake.
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