In Ur Blog, Strunkin Ur Grammar

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Or: Try To Keep Up With The Acronyms

Scene: The office.  MOM is taking a look at AMELIA'S blog, and gets to the entry titled "I Has a Hank."

MOM: I'll bet people get annoyed when you write "I has."

AMELIA: ... What?

MOM: You did it again here.  "I also has a book."  People will think you mean "I have" and it's a typo.

AMELIA: They won't.  It's ... it's something you say on the internet.  It's netspeak.

MOM: They won't think you're stupid and that you can't use your own language properly?

AMELIA: On the internet, "proper use of language" has an entirely different meaning.


I'm glad she dropped it at that.  I was worried she'd ask what that meaning was, and then I'd have to delve into a long explanation of macro-inspired internet idioms and lolcats and I'm in ur [noun], [verb]in ur [noun]z, and finally I was going to have to break it to her that OMGWTFBBQBACONZORS!!11!1! is a recognizable interjection as far as the internet is concerned.  My mom is cool, but I don't think she's ready for that yet.

She'd be all, O_o.

And she wouldn't have any idea how to express that, either.

Comments

[shriekingsnape.livejournal.com]

AMELIA: On the internet, "proper use of language" has an entirely different meaning.

No kidding. Netspeak has come far enough alond now that it can probably be considered at least its own dialect with all kinds of fun things like grammar.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've been fascinated by internet dialects for years--the emoticons, the asterisk stage directions, the text games, and the wordplay are very interesting topics to me--I do a lot of term papers on that subject.

Once I tried explaining to my aunt that there's a dialect you use on the internet, and she asked me very seriously, "How do I go about learning it? Are there classes?"

I had to resist the urge to give her the LOLcats URL and say it was an online tutorial. I ALMOST DID.

[cjtremlett.livejournal.com]

*laughs* It so is an online tutorial for netspeak, though! If you spend enough time reading lolcats, you absorb it all!

[alexvdl.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of asterisk stage directions. *wanders about aimlessly*

[shadesofmauve]

*applauds*

[alexvdl.livejournal.com]

*soliliquoys*