New media, new language

“A bookie’s got blagged last night.”

“Blagged? Speak English to me, Tony. I thought this country spawned the ****ing language and so far no one seems to speak it.”

“Blagged…robbed.”

A memerable quote from a memerable movie, Guy Ritchie’s Snatch. This goes to show you that even a country where people supposedly speak the same language, people don’t always speak the same language.

With the internet around, even American English is becoming a new language: “internet English,” if you will. Though, if you want to get technical, it’s called “leet,” “l337,” “1337,” or “elite” for those who are l337 challenged. I usually refer to it as “l337″ and don’t toss the one in. I think it’s silly because then it becomes a number. Anyway, the general idea behind the “elite” language is that symbols and numbers are used to replace letters in words and new acronyms are formed. So instead of “Hi, how are you?” it becomes something more along the lines of “|-|1, |-|0\/\/ 4r3 u?” Sometimes it would be “r” instead of “4r3,” though I’m not even entirely sure that’s 100% correct. That form of elite is uber-leet, sort of like a dialect to spoken English. Most people don’t type that way. Instead it’s more things like “hi, how r u?” (A lot of times people don’t capitalize and ignore punctuation, especially apostrophes.) Other things include “WTF?” instead of “what the ****?,” “the” becomes “teh” for some unknown reason, “letters like ‘R’ and ‘U’ can mean words like “are” and “you!” (thanks Futurama). One of the most common “words” in elite is “LOL,” which means “laugh out loud.” Some of the greater idiots go so far as to actually speak “L-O-L” because they think they’re cool. (“WTF” can be said instead of “what the ****” because it actually stands for words, not laughing.) “LOL” has further evolved into things like “rofl” (rolling on [the] floor laughing), “roflmao” (rolling on [the] floor laughing my ass off), and the extreme “roflmfao” (rolling on [the] floor laughing my ****ing ass off). I’m sure there are more, and you could definitely create your own (roflmaoshipm: “rolling on [the] floor laughing my ass off so hard I peed myself). For more information, check out Wikipedia and the Urban Dictionary. Please note, at the time of posting, the entry for “leet” on Urban Dictionary had an image with a profane word on it so it might still be there.

How did this language come about? Well, Wikipedia can give you a definite answer, but I ran into it when I started instant messaging with AIM, and when I started online gaming. At first it was only things like “LOL,” “WTF,” “BRB” (be right back”, “G2G” (got to go), and “TTYL” (talk to you later). Of course, these things are rarely, if ever, written with capital letters. It’s my belief that elite spawned because people who suck at typing wanted a faster way to get their message out. With people who use the “hunt and peck” method (one or two fingers tpying one to two letters at a time) take forever to type something out, and I’m sure that got quite annoying. I know when I first started out on a computer, I typed that way, and it was a pain in the butt. Then in middle school I was taught “touch typing” (you know, the whole “home keys” deal), though I quickly abandoned that because of how obnoxious it was. I’d always lose my place and not be able to get back. Now, I can type well without looking at the key board, but my fingers fly across the keyboard. I can type a thousand words in very little time if I’ve got all of my thoughts arranged properly. And I can usually go from keyboard to keyboard with almost no trouble. But I digress.

Another language thing that has come about with new media and new technology is not really entirely a “new” language. Instead, words are used in a different way or are shortened. Take cell phones for example. You bump into your friend who says “Hey, how come you didn’t return my call?” The younger generation usually will say “Oh, sorry, my battery died.” What battery? Well, it’s the cell phone battery, but most times that’s implied. I think, though, that more of the older crowd, even into the Baby Boomers, are using that term as well. I’m not sure I ever hear someone say “My cell phone battery died.” It’s implied. Like I said, this isn’t a new language, but it’s the same language being used in the same way. Some of it dates back to the ’50s and ’60s when computers first came out and filled an entire room. People will say their computer has a “bug” when it’s got a virus, which the majority of people think dates back to when a moth was caught in one of the first computers and the tech wrote in the log that there was a “bug” in the computer, and then stapled the culprit (a moth) next to the entry. I read in The Book of General Ignorance that this wasn’t actually the first instance of this, though I don’t remember what it said it was (good book, but very condescending). It was a new term that came out related to the new media, computers, but is still used today.

No longer is a “mouse” just the little furry thing that flits around (hopefully not) your kitchen floor, nor a “worm” something that lives underground and eats dirt, nor a “trojan” some guy named “Achilles.” The list goes on and on, and it’s probably never going to stop, even if we eventually evolve to the point of telepathy. Cool as that would be, we’d just be talking to each other without saying anything, but words would still be used. As the Sophists who came before Plato said,  language is the basis of thought. (That’s paraphrased, not a direct quote, so hence no quotation marks.)

So who knows? Maybe in ten years, I’ll write another blog post here (or elsewhere) about a new form of language that’s been created in relation to another new media. (Ha! Even “blog” is a new word, but you already knew that.)