Quote:
“These days you sometimes hear students saying "brb" (be right back) to one another when they temporarily take their leave. I have also overheard "lol" (laughing out loud) in conversations among young people. However, these neologisms need to be put into perspective. Infusion of written acronyms into everyday speech is a common linguistic process—to wit, RSVP, AWOL, or ASAP. If a few more lexical shortenings make their way into general usage, that's nothing out of the ordinary.” (Baron, 2009)
Reaction:
This is a very interesting view about how digital media may be changing our language. RSVP and ASAP became shortened before there was a digital media to change our language. What I do not understand is, why is it so bad to say “brb” when we say ASAP? I never thought of this view before, seeing it brought to attention begs the questions, why does one harm the language or threaten the language and the other one is acceptable. I understand it is only natural for the older generation to say that the younger generation is ruining our language or changing our language. These same complaints have been going on for generations. For as far back as learning it has been said that the younger generation is losing the older generations language. That if we kept going there would be no more language.
If you look around the world no language stays the same. In Switzerland they speak High German and Low German. The younger generation speaks a variation of one and the older generation speaks the other. If you learn the one the older generation speaks and go to Switzerland and speak it in front of the younger generation they will laugh at you and say you sound like my grandmother. Language changes as time changes, nothing ever stays the same including language.
Related Material:
I wanted to learn Swiss-German because I am Swiss and I would like to be able to read my family tree. When I went looking for things to buy to learn I found a comment like this, “My boyfriend is Swiss, born in the capital Bern. I’ve wanted to learn his language to make visiting family more fun so I bought pimslers swiss german. After listening and practicing my boyfriend informed me that a lot of the terms and phrases are only used in Zurich, and others are out of date. If you study with this, people will most likely understand you... but when they start giggling it’s because you’re talking like their grandmother/father might. I understand it’s hard to make a course on swiss german because there are around 13 different dialects all over the country, each having its own expressions and twists on words. But I would love it someone could make one using the current Bern dialect.” After reading what she had to say I realized that there are several dialects to the same language which indicates that language changes through different locations. Knowing that it changes with different locations why would the changing of language over time be such a big deal.
References:
Baron, N. (2009, March). Are digital media changing language?. Educational Leadership, 66(6), 42-46. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar09/vol66/num06/Are-Digital-Media-Changing-Language%C2%A2.aspx
Sexton, J. (2005, July 08). Review on swiss german: learn to speak and understand swiss german with pimsleur language programs [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Swiss-German-Understand-Pimsleur-Language/product-reviews/074353848X/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
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