How the Internet Is Changing Language 295
Ant writes "BBC News reports on how the internet is changing language. What was once understandable only to the tech savvy has become common. From the article: 'To Google' has become a universally understood verb and many countries are developing their own Internet slang. But is the Web changing language and is everyone up to speed?'"
LOL (Score:5, Funny)
LOL.
And yeah, I've heard people say it IRL. I've also heard people say IRL IRL.
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I also spontaneously burst out "TEH NOM!" when I taste good food.
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I regularly say "teh" instead of "the" when speaking...
Looking at your id, I'm expecting that most people you speak to mistake this behaviour for dementia.
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"WTF" ends up particularly charming IRL, IMHO...though YMMV.
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"WTF" ends up particularly charming IRL, IMHO...though YMMV.
lol whats "charming"? liek uber?
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I always think it sounds lame. It's rather cumbersome - 5 syllables instead of the three. Plus when I see WTF I don't see it as the letters, I read it as "what the fuck?" anyway. With something like "lol" I just read it as its own word now, it doesn't mean laugh out loud anymore, it's more of a "I know what I'm saying is kinda lame but I hope you don't mind"
PS lol
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....which kinda made me LOL.
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....which kinda made me LOL.
You mean... Lima Oscar Lima, right?! :p
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My uncle and I were talking once and he wanted to be discreet, so he said "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot."
Yeah, I've used that trick when I don't want to swear in public as well (though I'd never say "WTF"), I've used it typed for emphasis on message boards as well as in Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. where it seems to carry more weight than a simple WTF on it's own.
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That's brilliant! I am now going to start expanding acronyms using the phonetic alphabet.
Zulu Oscar Mike Golf! Romeo Oscar Foxtrot Lima!
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Whenever I hear someone attempt to pronounce "LOL" it always makes me cringe. It always reminds me of Jeremy from Pure Pwnage (and his "LUL!"), which immediately paints the person as a colossal idiot. Sadly it's usually pretty accurate too.
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Yeah I've heard people say LOL too. What made me cringe is when something was REALLY funny, so instead of laughing, they actually went "Loooooooooooool", holding a pause on the o sound during pronouciation.
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I'm sorry, but it's all cringeworthy. When you start spelling your emotions, you should seek counseling. I have a home schooled friend who used to do that. There are some things friends shouldn't let friends do. This is one of them...
He now laughs like a normal person, and may even have a date in the near future. There is always hope...
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wiki snip: Lol is a Dutch word (not an acronym) which, coincidentally, means "fun" ("lollig" means "funny").
so don't blame us.
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Yes, heard in several places like at work (male, 27) and gf of my friend (female, 24) and her friends too. First off it seems you can use the word more - if you actually laughed out loud as often you'd seem rather manic. Also I've noted they manage to use it as an emotional state like sad, happy etc. for being either amused or finding something silly. Or as an interjection like "The boss said so, lol, but I just did it anyway."
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American pissed, or British pissed?
British pissed would be "ROFL-hiccup-MAO", American pissed would be "ROFLMAO-dammit!"
Can anyone be really up to date? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been on the online scene since the Fidonet era, circa the 1980's, and I'm still trying to learn new online slangs all the time.
Re:Can anyone be really up to date? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just read the Lolcat Bible:
http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page [lolcatbible.com]
You'll turn the tables and be confusing the kids in no time.
Try the real one (Score:3, Interesting)
Just read the real bible and you'll be confusing fundies left and right.
And you can go for even nastier than confusing if you want. For example, find someone who's a fan of that Ezekiel 4:9 bread, and tell them that the whole recipe given by God there continues all the way to Ezekiel 4:13: "and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man". Yep, God's recipe there actually calls for human shit as an ingredient for that bread. (Though Ezekiel himself, for being so faithful and kosher all his life, get
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Erk, I mean Ezekiel 4:12, not 4:13. Awful place to hit the wrong key. Sorry.
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No... what it calls for is to use it as fuel for baking over... not as an ingredient (baking with vs. mixing with). A quick googling turns up this informational page [hedon.info] which tells you how to make your own briquettes.
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But most importantly the choice of words in 4:15 makes it clearer what it's meant. "and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith" My emphasis again.
No, you're being an idiot. Cooking over cowshit was SOP, cooking over human shit defiles food, because involving human shit in anything was a defilement at the time, because they didn't understand E.Coli &c. Further, most of the bad shit in the bible where someone did something in the name of the lord is considered by the christian faith to be "some old shit" (phrasing mine) because that's all just background and alleged history, and christians are supposed to follow the word of Christ and the gospels w
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Just read the real bible and you'll be confusing fundies left and right.
That's true; for example, most of the fundies are anti-drug and anti-alcohol. But the bible has absolutely nothing to say about drugs, and absolutely nothing bad to say about alcohol. Most of the fundies really worship money rather than God, even though the bible is transparently anti-greed. Pat Robertson has converted more Christians to athiesm than all the athiests at slashdot put together.
As to your recipe, you misread it -- the dung
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Well, the fact still remains that the lord himself is calling it "defiled bread", one way or another. You could argue exactly what is used how, but still the result of that recipe is explicitly called "defiled bread". That's still quite far from what they think they're eating there, i.e., some wholesome nutrition recipe from the Lord himself.
Plus, hey, it's still got a lot more shock value than a quote from the lolcat bible, which is really what I was saying there :p
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Just read the real bible and you'll be confusing fundies left and right.
And you can go for even nastier than confusing if you want. For example, find someone who's a fan of that Ezekiel 4:9 bread, and tell them that the whole recipe given by God there continues all the way to Ezekiel 4:13: "and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man". Yep, God's recipe there actually calls for human shit as an ingredient for that bread. (Though Ezekiel himself, for being so faithful and kosher all his life, gets Gods dispensation in 4:15 to eat his with cow shit instead.)
Especially if you spring that on them after they ate some, honestly, no amount of lolcat bible can even start to compare :p
The poop wasn't an ingredient, it was the fuel used to cook the bread [biblegateway.com]: "And you shall eat it as barley cakes; and bake it using fuel of human waste in their sight.”
Doesn't make it a whole lot more pleasant, but let's at least be factually correct.
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Didn't a bunch of fundie churches proclaim the KJV to be the one true version? Makes it more fun than the newer ones which toned it down like that.
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I've been online since the CompuServe and BITNET era (mid-80s), and I'm not trying to learn new online slang.
If those kids want me to understand them, they can use English; and if they don't want me to understand them... good, because I'm really not that interested.
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i swear the incesant "llOOOOooL"(verbatim) nearly drove me to wtfpwn 'em.
Fixed that for ya ;)
New additin to Dictionary (Score:2)
First Post becomes common
No. (Score:4, Insightful)
"[...] is everyone up to speed?"
No. That's the whole point of slang - you use it to show that you belong in a specific subgroup. If everyone is "up to speed" on some slang it no longer works as slang. Everyone who wants to show subgroup membership (and that's everybody, pretty much) will start using other new words and expressions instead.
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The point is how it ceases to be a slang... And on a quite global scale, enabling unprecended level of direct interboundary (interocean even) communication - the very act of which is what has always shaped languages. But rarely among so diverse people (and, face it, with not terribly impressive / solid familiarity with the languges they use; vide this post...)
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
"And on a quite global scale, enabling unprecended level of direct interboundary (interocean even) communication"
Not as much as many native English speakers seem to want to think. Most people here in Japan, including academics and other well-educated professionals, never visit non-Japanese language websites - or if they do (some social websites or similar), only the subset that is in Japanese. And this is generally true even when their English proficiency is quite good. I saw similar behavior (though to a lesser extent) in my native Sweden some years ago.
"Language globalization" or not, the vast majority of people around the world are most comfortable communicating in their own language, with people largely sharing their own culture. We don't really have one internet as much as a number of separate, semi-permeable internets, each with their own language, culture, trends and memes but with some high-profile stuff "leaking" between them. We may superficially seem as we're sharing the same online culture, but for every runaway meme shared by the world, you have tens, hundreds that never go beyond the particular internet where it was born.
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"[...] is everyone up to speed?"
No. That's the whole point of slang - you use it to show that you belong in a specific subgroup. If everyone is "up to speed" on some slang it no longer works as slang. Everyone who wants to show subgroup membership (and that's everybody, pretty much) will start using other new words and expressions instead.
what subgroup uses "lawl" in actual speech? Because I wish to slap that group.
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And, honestly, "to google" and the like are slang, not jargon, and thus the "tech savvy" have nothing to do with it.
Re:No. (Score:5, Funny)
Language changes when people talk to each other (Score:2)
The Internet lets everybody in the world talk to each other, faster and more flexibly than before. So yes, that's going to change language, because people who would have never talked to each other are doing so, and people who had obscure things to talk about can find other people to talk about them with that they wouldn't have before.
Surely.. (Score:5, Funny)
'How teh intartubez are changing how ppl speak' ?
The "Internet"? (Score:2, Funny)
Is that thing still around?
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Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
back in time : Slashdot = News for nerds, stuff that matters.
now : Slashdot = Useless stuff, badly reported, just to get clicks.
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Back then Slashdot was the original /. - with the /. effect.
Now, slashdot has become a ??
So many complaints (Score:4, Insightful)
So many complaints about /. articles.
So why do you people come back ... and waste time reading ... then wasting more time commenting?
I are in ur brainz (Score:5, Funny)
... changing ur langwigez!
Keyboards (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only has the internet changed the way some people speek, but just the common use of keyboards without the intervention of editing or editors (or thinking, sometimes) has contributed to the way we speak online, and occasionally in real life. A few examples that pop to mind are "borken," a simple transposition of the "r" and "o" in broken-- and of course thanks to the Swedish Chef [youtube.com]. That transposition also gave us the incredibly useful word "bork" as well. The transposition "teh" has also crept into usage, usually to show some sort of derision or sarcasm.
What other transpositions or artifacts of keyboard usage can /. come up with?
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Re:Keyboards (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Keyboards (Score:4, Funny)
What other transpositions or artifacts of keyboard usage can /. come up with?
*^#%@#NO CARRIER
I hate^h^h^h^hlike this
ITS LIKE SHOUTING
h tee tee pee colon slash slash slash dot dot org
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Has more to do with fast typing with both hands
What about television? (Score:4, Funny)
Go back 50 years, and you will probably find the same commentary about television. How it was spreading new terms and speech patterns and what not.
It's funny, though. I tried to Google for articles, posts and blogs about this from 50 years ago, and didn't find anything.
Were people back 50 years ago too lazy to post crap on the Internet . . . ?
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Re:What about television? (Score:4, Interesting)
Go back 50 years, and you will probably find the same commentary about television. How it was spreading new terms and speech patterns and what not.
Funny you mention that, since I just ran across this:
http://sundaymagazine.org/2010/08/from-1890-the-first-text-messages/ [sundaymagazine.org]
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Whoosh~
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Eventually, IBM invented the hand-crank typewriter, the precursor to the selectric, called the selecrank.
Actually, I learned to interface with a computer through one of these things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Teletype_with_papertape_punch_and_reader.jpg
It had a crisp, clear touch, something like the IBM type M keyboard ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard [wikipedia.org] )
And for the sysadmin, that big roll of toilette paper behind the keyboard kept a log of what anyone did.
Sysadmin: "What did you do?"
Me: "I didn't do nuthin'"
Sysadmin: "Well, let's take a look at what was printed out here . . . "
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At the risk of being serious, factual, and pedantic, you didn't use lowercase "i" for the numeral "1"; you used lowercase "l" (el).
@anyone thinking this is a joke: It's true. Since it was perfectly obvious from the context whether the character was supposed to be a numeral or an alpha character, many typewriters didn't bother including a separate key for the numerals "0" and "1". For example [blogspot.com]
your what you speak. (Score:2)
The single most hacked word is "your" lol. Who started it?
Not so much the internet as games (Score:5, Interesting)
My eight year old son plays the usual games in the playground but I noticed that it is now possible to pause them. The way it works in you are running around playing Tag or something and somebody says Pause and everything stops. Its a bit like time out in basketball, but for me it is directly derived from the electronic games they play which generally have a Pause function.
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Maybe the specific usage of the word "pause" is new-ish, but the concept has been there as far back as I can remember, from before I or anybody I knew even knew what the Internet was.
So long you were playing with people who weren't jerks, you could always request for people to wait a minute while you tie your shoelaces or whatever.
WOW (Score:2)
I have never thought languages can change. I thought they talk the way they do since stone age. Honestly. They found out that languages change due to a new innovation which changed the life of many people? The industrial revolution also changed the language of people. They now know what a company is and a factory and in most countries they know what a labor union is and what it is good for.
But even more astonishing then finding out, that new things influence languages, is the fact that they came up with thi
To google.. (Score:5, Informative)
For instance, we now have "to google" in English, but if you turn that into a French verb, it needs a French verb ending, thus "googler".
In German you'd need an -n but "googlen" doesn't work, but by transposing the letters you can use the -eln verb ending and so you have "googeln".
In Swedish, verbs need an -a ending, requiring the 'e' be dropped, so "googla".
I thought in swedish ... (Score:2)
... you'd just lengthen the first syllable so you'd have "Gooooogle".
Hey , the Muppet Show taught me all I need to know about language! Though admittedly some of
its facts were a bit fozzy around the edges.
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That's Spanish (Mexican dialect).
Anytime you realize you need to find something, appropriate response is to jump on the table and yell: Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle!
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Re:To google.. (Score:5, Interesting)
From the verb stem (gugur-) one can derive all the other forms of the verb, including gugureba [google.com] (if [one] googles), gugutta [google.com] (googled), gugurimasu [google.com] (google [polite]) and even gugurikata [google.com] (googling technique), gugutteirassyaru [google.com] (to google [exalted]), gugutteitadakereba [google.com] (if [I] humbly receive the addressee's act of googling), guguritai [google.com] ([I] want to google) and gugure [google.com] (google [impolite imperative, similar to "Google it, motherfucker!"]).
Re:To google.. (Score:5, Funny)
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The worst, I've found, in Spanish is "wikipedear". I've noted that these neologisms (googlear, wikipediar etc.) only get used in the participle or gerund, never as the usual first/second/third person etc. conjugations (you see things like "Lo he googleado..." but never "lo googlearé" etc.
Interestingly, "cederrón" - which means CD-ROM - is actually in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española ( http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltConsulta?TIPO_BUS=3&LEMA=cederr%C3%B3n [buscon.rae.es], so long as slashdot d
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...and in Finland, the verb would be "googlata". Many finns never learn to pronounce g, though, so they'd pronounce it with k-sounds instead.
The internet made you stupid (Score:5, Funny)
Reminded me of this: http://i.imgur.com/MFEQB.jpg [imgur.com]
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Internet doesn't make people stupid, correct, but they all manage to congregate in a very special place all the same [yahoo.com]
Not really (Score:3, Interesting)
I was expecting this to be more about how languages are infiltrating other languages (think Firefly and how they swear in Chinese). More like how the internet is making people more knowledgeable of tech terminology.
Whe are lossing the internet to the mainstream. (Score:2)
People are comming here, and using words ignoring the original meaning.
- "Hackers" to describe everything maling.
- "Noob" and "newbies". People that call noob to everybody, even unskilled players (?).
- "Netiquette". This words is hardly in use today.
- "Lurking". Another word missing in combat.
- "Quoting". MIA.
- "IMHO".
- "IANAL".
If you argue that noob!=newbie, you are called nerd... ON THE FUCKING INTERNETS.
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I don't know, I've always found that "newbie" is a fairly neutral term for someone new to an environment whereas "noob" is used as a pejorative term for people who *aren't* new but still act like they don't have a clue what they're doing.
How lolcats are changing the language (Score:2)
I can has new vernacular?
What? No comments on slashspeak? (Score:3, Insightful)
What? No mention of Slashspeak? No "If you loose at poker, your a bad player, and you will run out of chip's"?
This is a repeat from 1950, 1914, 1899, etc. (Score:2)
"BBC News reports on how the internet/computer/telephone/horseless carriage/steam locomotive/rifled gun barrel/frigate/fire/written language is changing language."
Leetspeak (Score:2)
From TFA:
"Leetspeak" in which some letters are replaced by numbers which stem from programming code.
Uhh ... or, you know, standard Arabic numerals used in most (all?) Western languages.
Unless they're trying to say that "programming code" replaces letters with numbers. Sad to say, I don't really think you'll get very far calling C0ns0l3.Wr1t3L1n3("H3110 w0r1d!").
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d0 57upid 7r4|\|5147i0|\| 14|\|gu4g35 (0u|\|7?
\/\/|-|y |\|07?
Re:what about (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, there is a perl module for that.
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Clicked enter for some reason:
Here is the module: http://search.cpan.org/~jmadler/Acme-LeetSpeak-0.01/lib/Acme/LeetSpeak.pm [cpan.org]
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Re:what about (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, there is a perl module for that.
I'm pretty sure that --
d0 57upid 7r4|\|5147i0|\| 14|\|gu4g35 (0u|\|7?
is valid perl6. You don't need a module.
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===SORRY!===
Confused at line 1, near "d0 57upid "
You need to get the lastest nightly build. That code starts a loop that churns out nonstop images from memegenerator.net.
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flibble and snoff
Re:BBC talking about changing language is irony (Score:5, Informative)
Are you from the UK? Some of your suggestions are just plain weird, no one in the UK says "Al-bine-izm" or "drunk driving". "BBC Sport" is a name so I fail to see what's invalid about that.
The BBC just pronounces things the way their primary audience (i.e. the British public that funds them) speak and expect them to speak. They seem to be using the standard accepted pronunciation that everyone else here in the UK uses.
I've never heard them say Osaka or Syracuse as they're not words that come up for any reason, but I suspect that's a clue to the fact that you're perhaps not British? If that's the case, then there's the reason you seem to think their pronunciations are abuse of language, rather than the standard accepted pronunciations of British English speaking people.
I guess it's like how in the UK we generally call Mathematics "maths" rather than "math", and pronounce "route" closer to "root", rather than the common North American pronunciation of "rowt".
The BBC is just using the pronunciation native to their staff, and that their primary audience- the ones who pay for their existence, the British license payer, would expect.
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Yeah, you might want to look into your assertions regarding American pronunciations. I don't recall Chuck Berry singing about "rowt" 66. You know how many dialects and accents one will find just in the British Isles? Well, multiply the landmass considerably and you'll see that there are one or two variations here in the colonies.
That said, your point is pretty much dead on. Why the hell wouldn't the Beeb feature pronunciations that ape the majority of its listeners.
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The BBC just pronounces things the way their primary audience (i.e. the British public that funds them) speak and expect them to speak.
Well.... I've always thought that the fun thing about the differences in pronunciation make for fun cross cultural flirting, which admittedly is more convenient when you speak the same language.
A friend of mine spent a month in London, and I asked him, "You know that whole thing about how Americans love hearing people with British accents talk? Does the reverse hold true as well?"
"Oh yes," he told me. "One of the first things they asked me was, 'to say the name of that metal.' I wasn't sure what they
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My girlfriend is a Canadian living in the UK and we go back over to see her family and friends quite frequently, so I know what you mean about appreciation of accents, I often get asked to say things when I'm over there which leave them in fits of giggles. Similarly though, I regularly like making my girlfriend say things which she pronounces funny, generally words involving the letters "out" or "old" amuse me the most with that accent.
In the UK we use the term "fag" to refer to cigarette too, so it's commo
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Actually British English uses both pronunciations, but in completely different contexts. This is a rooter [wikipedia.org], whereas this is a rowter [wikipedia.org].
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Are you a troll or are you honestly suggesting that the BBC should use "American English"?
Reg you lay toe ree : This is correct
Drugs War : This is correct (it's the "War on Drugs")
Drink Driving : This is fine (ie "Don't drink and drive")
Al bee nizm : It's pronounced "Albeeno" in Britain
BBC Sport : What could possibly be wrong with this?
Sigh rah que suh : Seriously, how often is this word said on the BBC?
Aw say kah : Same as above
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Funnily enough they're using the form of English that they speak, namely British English. It wouldn't be fair for me to demand you speak in Scots just because your stupid words make my ears want to cry, would it?
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Well played.
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tl;dr
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Unfortunately (and i am NOT a native english speaker), this is not true. For a while it was, until a few years ago when non-english speakers reached a critical mass and started pulling a lot harder. Now you need to localize everything, as the people of many regions will simply reject anything in english.
If there was ever a chance for a universal language (as that would make the world a much better place, regardless of WHICH language it is), its dead now. Or well, i guess it could be mandarin someday, though
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The 'magic number' for a Java class file is 0xCAFEBABE.