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How Technology Has Changed Our Language

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Submitted By gracegoodlad
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How Technology Has Changed Our Language

Internet Knowledge:
Some words have taken on a very new meaning thanks to technology. Not very long ago, the word “tweet” referred simply to something that birds do. Now it is also used to represent the process of posting a 140 character message on the social network Twitter.
Social media’s been responsible for a lot of new words, for example tweeps, twitterverse and retweet. The word “friend” has become a verb, as in “she friended me on Facebook”. The term “check-in” no longer applies just to hotels and airports; these days it’s just as commonly used when someone reports where they are via a social network.
Technology has also changed the way we write. Mobile phones have been responsible for a lot of the change, as users have moved towards texting as an everyday form of communication. For a start, WRITING IN UPPER CASE MEANS YOU’RE SHOUTING, while lower case writing is now the accepted form.
Meanwhile, text language is full of abbreviations, missing vowels and acronyms. For example, the abbreviations LOL, OMG and gr8 are all widely used today but hadn’t been invented a few years ago. One of the drivers in this is that screen sizes and character limits are low, meaning that users need to abbreviate to fit their messages in.
My Knowledge:
‘Emojis’ which are small digital images and ‘emoticons’ which are representation of a facial expression such as a smile or frown, formed by various combinations of keyboard characters are also now used because of technology. Their main purpose is to show how someone is feeling and their emotions rather than a person typing out how they are actually feeling.
Technology has also enabled new words to be created such as ‘selfie’ ‘twerk’ ect. Without technology, there would be no way in which everyone would be able to hear about the words unless someone was to ‘post’ it onto social media.

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