How Technology Is Shaping Language 173
An anonymous reader writes "This is an interesting article about how technology is shaping the English language, which touches on the fate of the current crop of (sometimes silly) tech-inspired words, and anticipates an increased blurring of the line between the written and spoken word. Professor David Crystal, honorary professor at the School of Linguistics and English Studies at the University of Bangor, says, 'This kind of ludicity [linguistic playfulness] is very attractive for a while. People keep it going and then it sort of falls out of use. Exactly how long it will go on for is unclear but it's like any game, any novelty, any linguistic novelty — I can't see it lasting. If you look back 10 years ago to the kind of clever-clever things that were going on in the 1990s — MUDs and MOOs — all the early game strategies and lots of very interesting language features coming up as people tried to develop a style of language that would suit the technology. Well, that technology's history now and the language has gone with it.'"
No editors == linguistic variation (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, before, you used to have editors who'd mold everything into U Chicago style guidelines or some such.
Now, everybody is his own editor. Is it web server or webserver? Web site or website? You decide.
You'll probably also see stuff where editors once had their fingers in the dike (like preventing the spread of "snuck [wsu.edu]") deluge the linguistic landscape.
Also people are free to verb nouns as they please.
Finally, I've noticed people are a lot more comfortable spontaneously making up portmanteaus [wikipedia.org].
The Jargon File (Score:5, Informative)
It would have been nice to include a little deeper history in this article, like maybe talking about the Jargon File [catb.org], the dictionary for old school hackers that's filled with fascinating history about the technology and innovations behind some of the terms we still use online today.
Or would that detract from the idea that cultural-shifts resulting in lexical shifts is some kind of totally new and unexpected phenomenon?
Re:Texting (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Language changes, get over it (Score:3, Informative)
Why would a linguist of all people have such a romantic attachment to the idea of an unchanging English language?
"For a linguist like me, this is very exciting but for your average pedant this is horrifying."
I didn't really see anything in the article indicating he desired an unchanging English language or even particularly critical of the changes he's observing.