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03/13/12(Tue)06:28:28 No.1738014>>1737968
I
think it already is (in written form) among net-literate people under
the age of 25 or so. It's only a matter of time before the stigma of
saying it aloud fades. One thing that's interesting about Internet
language is that spoken forms spring from written forms instead of the
usual vice-versa.
Here's a small mindfuck: who decides what words
are and are not "proper" English? Think about it. Dictionaries, even
the biggest and most prestigious (that is, the Oxford English
Dictionary), are staffed by a relative handful of people with no real
oversight except their own wits and collective opinions. Even in France,
where the language is managed by a government-controlled academy, a
bare smattering of people determine language policy for tens of millions
of speakers. Language standardization is very important in writing, but
not so much in speech, so it can make you think twice about correcting
someone's misspoken aphorism or incorrect word choice in a conversation,
if you really take to heart the idea that spoken language policy is
more or less arbitrary. After all, language's chief purpose is
communication, and as long as two speakers are mutually intelligible to
each other, their shared language is serving that function. Even if you
know it's "acorn" and not "egg corn," if you know what the other
fellow's trying to say, it doesn't matter how he says it. |
