whats with 'em namez.



Eating up vowels, remixing and mashing up differet names, chopping to convenient length, in quest of originality creating a langauge of our own. wlcm t th lngg f 21st cntry. (welcome to the language of 21st century. well, i did go overboard with this one, but sometimes i wonder, what if vowels do go extinct. how would globalization and fight for identity throughout the world shape the language in this scenario?)
In '1984', George Orwell envisioned a new language invented by the establishment - 'newspeak'. It also had shortforms, mashups, and similar traits to the one we are seeing in the web 2.0 era. however, the context is polar opposite. In the novel, the language is a product of an authoritarian regime, whereas the the new language we are helping to shape is a ramification of demographic nature of the new media and new digital technologies.
Even here, the demographic that is at the forefront of this change is the DNs - the young and technologically savvy. A look at their sms's, emails, IM chats show their penchant for topicality of word inventions in usage (and apparently, there is no leaking of information even though the mesage might contain a totally new, mashed up or otherwise, word. DNs understand each other's context pretty well. ) , convenience (short and easy usage of the device. twitter is successful because it allows u to shoot of small messages across multiple platform effortlessly. i can send my message through a widget, through its website, cell phone, or through IM, and the messages can be viewed just as easily and in just many platforms.).
The difference between the usage of sms in India and the rest of the world also must have implication in how the usage shapes the language and attitude. I have a hunch that the sms shortening of words and hindi word versions in sms have a role to play in the confident usage of hinglish in general interactions.

Comments

Manish said…
loved this post. pawar can you compile a list of 20 newspeak( not the orwellian variety) for our book..
Wed May 14, 01:31:00 PM GMT+5:30
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