It's commonly accepted in the linguistic community (at least in my narrow experience in that community) that all language changes but that spoken language changes much more quickly than written language and that writing has historically slowed down language change (at least in English; come to think of it, I know nothing about the history of other languages). Thanks to our standardized spelling system, this is easy to see: surprise is still spelled s-u-r even though few people pronounce that r anymore; special is still spelled c-i even though everyone I've ever heard say it has pronounced it sh; every is spelled as though it's still pronounced with three syllables; mission and related words--well, we've just come to accept s-i-o-n as an alternate spelling of "shun," ignoring entirely the fact that it was once pronounced as it is spelled. The list goes on. People often complain about how our language isn't very phonetic, but I think they fail to realize that we'd have to update our spellings of words at least once every generation to keep the phonetics up. Personally, I'm grateful for standardized spelling because it makes Google and other information-age technology work so well; sure, I think the language could have been standardized a little better (drop the a out of feather like Noah Webster suggested, spell corn and kernel the same way, etc.), but standardization is good in general (in this regard, at least).
(This, not surprisingly, is not at all what I intended to talk about. Welcome to my blog.)
ANYway, as I was listening to some songs on YouTube today, I had a spark of hypothesis that I'd like you to weigh in on. This is purely speculative, and I doubt it'll be possible to study this for at least another 40 or 50 years, but I wanna write this down so maybe some day someone will stumble across this and think, "Wow. That kid was on to something. Wish I knew more than just his nym." So here goes--
I enjoy reading comments on YouTube. They often get far removed from the subject of the video. Because I'm not on FaceBook or Twitter and because I'm in the class of people who punctuates text messages, YouTube threads are really my only exposure to typical online communication, and it fascinates me!
Today I realized that, in the modern world, written language is changing faster than spoken language, and I wonder if it will start affecting the way people speak. I mean, if I walk into a fast food joint, walk up to the counter, and say, "I can has cheeseburger?" that certainly wouldn't fall into the realm of normally accepted American English, but if I see a video on YouTube in which a guy walks into a fast food joint and orders a burger, I could leave a comment that says, "i can haz cheezeberger" and be totally appropriate.
Now, sure, I admit that quoting pop culture is nothing new, but the fact is that YouTube threads aren't always quoting lolcatz--in fact, most times people aren't quoting anything; they're just typing. Sometimes, I come across a comment that is totally unintelligible to me. (I don't have time to look for one right now; perhaps I should start collecting them.)
I'm not suggesting the change will happen very quickly--and I'm not even sure what the change will be. I mean, a lot of the change is solely visual (e.g. you are-->ur), so that can't really come through speaking, and I don't really hear people saying things like lol, etc. It's mostly grammatical, I guess. Subject-verb agreement is often ignored, and I think it's on purpose: I don't imagine the people who type things like "27 ppl is retarted" on a video with 27 dislikes on it would say such a thing out loud, but I certainly don't know that for sure.
Anyway. Gotta go.
This is a fascinating idea; I think you're onto something.
ReplyDeleteHere are some possible reasons for why the change occurred:
1) People feel more anonymous online. This makes them braver when they experiment with new ways of communicating.
2) Written language would have evolved faster than spoken language all along, but until now it never had a platform to do so. With technologies such as instant messaging and texting there is finally an environment where written language can be used in real time.
3) Typed communication is slower than speaking so it makes sense to cut corners so conversations run more smoothly. This makes abbreviations catch on much faster. Over time these abbreviations become stylized and incorporated in the language.
4) The mistakes people make are much more visible. When someone says something different it disappears, but when someone types something different it stays there on the screen or in the comment box. This makes it so people can interact with it, scroll back and read it again, read it to friends etc.
5) When you write something on the internet in a new way it reaches way more people than when you say something in a new way. If I make a weird comment on a Youtube video it can potentially reach millions of people. When I say something weird to my grocer I have an audience of one.
So, it makes sense that online language trends would spread faster.
That's about all I got.
I was going to leave a comment similar to Dan's, but it wouldn't have been as eloquent. So, I'm glad Dan got here first so I can just say "Ditto".
ReplyDeleteGoing along with Dan's 2nd point:
ReplyDeleteI really believe you're right. And I think it not only has to do with "real time" but also with formality. Before the internet, informal writing didn't really exist in the way it does now. Sure, there were letters and notebooks and diaries, but none of them were ever public (relating to Dan's 4th and 5th points now, I guess) so never made a splash. I think part of the reason that written language has changed more slowly that spoken language is that it's almost always more formal--or was before we entered the world of Web 2.0, at which point everything changed.
Thanks for commenting, you two; I hope more people do.
It may, to some extent, affect the way we talk. Eventually. But I don't think it will change the way we talk very much. Because frankly, to translate some of the habits into speech is wasteful and ineffective. To say LOL instead of actually laughing is pretty stupid, for example.
ReplyDeleteAbbreviations and acronyms are plentiful online. Some of the abbreviations, I think, might find useful ways of creeping into the spoken vocabulary of American English. But acronyms, on the other hand, haven't been as successful at integrating themselves into the language unless they have somehow become hugely prevalent in society. (I'm thinking, for example, laser.) A few of them have sneaked into our vocabulary and become words many people never knew were originally acronyms. But on the whole, acronyms are jargon. They're confined to a specific context and often to a specific environment.
Something else, while I'm thinking about it: of all of the times I can think of written language actually wending its way into the spoken language instead of the other way around all apply to specific literary phenomena--a la Shakespeare (which is a whole 'nother ball of wax, anyway, since that's technically both written and spoken language when we're talking places) and Lewis Carroll with chortle and jabberwocky and even J.K. Rowling with Potter words like "Muggle"...
ReplyDeleteBut even then, those still worked within a fairly targeted demographic and then may or may not have spread far-reachingly outward from there.
And with that last comment, I clearly meant "plays" instead of "places," and I'm taking the typo as a sign it's time to crawl into bed and sleep my brain back into a normal, better functioning state.
ReplyDeleteI am sad to report, Confuzzled, that I mostly agree with you. However, my original idea was not so much individual words as actual sentential structure, so we can pretend to disagree anyway.
ReplyDelete