I recently came across an article that brought me to the press release from Oxford University Press and their announcement on adding a handful of new words and expressions originating from our Internet culture to it’s online edition of the Oxford Dictionaries.
Stemming from a multicultural background language and expressions have always interested me. I do not remember quite when, however a few years back I recall watching an episode of TV Total with Stefan Raab, a German comedian who often times showed clip excerpts of funny happenings on TV. The clip I am referring to displays youth speaking a lingo referencing to words (creating sentences) that include primarily German but also English, Turkish, Arabic and Greek references.
Either way, now when your less tech-savvy friends call you out on a conversation for describing your relationship as an LDR, how you ate too much and need to vom, or you forgot to send your apols on missing last weeks meetup – well you can now proudly (or not) point them to those words in the Oxford Online Dictionary to confirm that your web-drenched English is in fact a legitimate form of the modern vernacular.
New entries include:
- Apols
- bitcoin
- buzzworthy
- BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
- emoji
- geek chic
- hackerspace
- Internet of things
- LDR
- MOOC
- phablet
- srsly
- vom
- TL;DR
It’s worth noting that Oxford Dictionaries Online is not the same as the better-known Oxford English Dictionary. The latter permanent historical record of English word usage, while the former focuses on common uses within modern English. But tech lingo isn’t by any means barred OED – last June “big data” “tweet” and “redirect” were among a few terms to earn recognition.
What are your thoughts on how our language (the worlds languages) keeps degressing into the, what seems to be lazy tongue? Leave a comment below!
And just for the fun of it – for all you German speakers: