Language Mutation 2.0

Wed Jan 13 12:00:00 IST 2010, by Abhishek Mehta

To "unfriend" is a well-known word in social networking fraternity and has become Oxford word of the Year 2009. Phonetics, Words and Grammar evolve just like this, by constantly improving themselves. One good example of such evolution is the word "nickname". The word began with "ekename", in earlier English "eke" meant "also". So, "also known as" was "an ekename". Through time, however, people began to interpret the 'n' in "an" as the first letter of the following word. Hence nickname (: Ref..).

Language has developed chronologically, growing at par with the society. This is not true anymore; Internet phenomenon has made our society too large too soon. Single culture does not drive language growth anymore; arrogance, ignorance and market forces are manipulating it to the level of mutation. Chat rooms, emails and programming languages, spearheaded phase one of language mutation. LOL, ASAP and BRB like acronyms have ruled the Internet world, axe had even fallen over the pronouns like "you"/'u' and "We/v". This loss was bearable but the robust expansion of Internet, internationalization, published media, microblogging and worldwide success of social networking has pushed us in the phase 2.0 of mutation. Fate of your language appears much more indecisive; long-term effects of this mutation are still not calculated.

Domain/username Scarcity:

Annually, more than 30 million domains get registered worldwide. Getting any domain name with a reasonable semantic match is impossible (More..). So, companies are turning to weird ways of spelling and naming. Books will be called "bookz:, "and" will be spelled 'n', "for" will be 4 and "to" will be termed as '2'. This naming convention is neither illegal nor immoral but the fallout of the same will be seen in years to come. Domain/user names are the last few things entered in browsers without spell checkers. Generations with such spelling habits are going to invent some weirdo Lingua franca . Is this the beginning of lower human standards, so that robots can catch up?

Microblogging:

It is Hot! It is in! It is "The Thing"! And it is "oh la la". Whatever one says, it is linguist's nightmare. Lynn Truss might consider a suicide, if she reads, what comes out of microblogging. Founders, netizens, microbloggers and the bloggers have least concerns about such punctilious species. With expression limited to 150 characters, grammar goes for a toss and integers are preferred over words. It's more like alphanumeric literature unfit for writing poetry but fit enough for Serpentine Locomotion dance songs (take it easy lads).

The lost craft of handwriting:

My peers often complained about my bad handwriting; being a computer graduate my answer was "I do not give a damn". This was long back; now computer is everywhere and for everyone. Problem is, no one else also gives a damn, now. With keypads to type on and computers to type in, this beautiful skill of handwriting will only be limited to types of fonts printed by your printer. State of California in USA, famous for Silicon Valley and Arnold Schwarzenegger, recently passed a bill of making whole education system online. This is the first nail in handwriting's coffin. Oh yes! Even I want to save the trees or say the printing cost, but not in the primary schools.

Word Processors are like packaged foods:

Packaged foods are easy to cook, of course; are they healthiest, nein. Word processors make your life easier but it harms the human habits of concentration, memorizing, mesmerizing and even grammerizing. Keep on typing and it will keep correcting you. This is good to have feature in the hands of Stephen King or V S Naipaul but certainly not in the hands of kids, students and Engineers (I know this). Army of students without the jaws of spelling and grammar has to be on the life support of electronic tools forever. Like this conversation from 2020 AD:-

Daughter: Mom! Can you spell my name? My "Auto spell checker chip" has gone for upgrade.
Mom: Sorry, I can't honey! Mine is not upgraded since you were conceived.

Internationalization:

If "The World is Flat" then it is going to flatten the language. The case with English: In India Hindi has adopted English to form Hinglish, Queen is in trouble with the migrated pronunciation of her very own English and "Howdy" will be in spani-english . Language globalization is matter of pride, but the cost will appear in decades. With intermingling of so many foreign languages and such a vast vocabulary an individual's vocabularies will appear small. Such language will confine to its simplest form for, business, literature and communication purposes else masses won't get it. This certainly will harm the individual identity of any language.

On the name of development we have cut down the trees and have raised the jungle of cement; we crave for The Nature, which only exist in Amazon, I hope variety of human languages won't meet the same fate.

Courtesy:

Free Stock Photos for websites - FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Posted at 04:11PM Jan 13, 2010 by ABhi in Trends  |  Comments[0]