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Saturday, 17 April 2010

some internet English - and internet-spread english

"Accessing " internet English, especially internet- spread English  

Shakepeare had no problems with using anything

from anywhere 

as a verb , 

practically anything as an adjective in apposition ...

and so on.

After him many people tried to stop such things......

But it goes on:


Who hasn’t met  to  hoover ( From the American brand name of a vacuum cleaner)? in NB?
British people having been saying this for over 60 years!
But how about adolescents hoovering burgers in a burger bar?
You can still say they wolfed their food!
Ok girls, it's more typical of teenage boys, describe it  as wolfing OR hoovering as you wish. Apology accepted?


Have you ever googled (=performed a web search, {{ using a search engine, such as Google}}?


How about   FTPing  a digital file, using  Internet? (FTP stands for file transfer protocol.)

Watch Shrek II ( in English!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLm4t-d1qmU
At about minute 3,30
The herald announces an invite (Once we would have insisted on invitation for the noun, but verb to noun is shakespearean too!) from
The King and Queen
AKA Mum and  Dad
From. Also Known As

MSM :What're they ?
Main-Stream Media: the conventional, in every sense , mass media: Newspapers, magazines, radio and TV networks..


Deadtreepress.  Physical press as opposed to the press online.


Anglosphere: The English-speaking world considered as a global community. A very useful word.

Fisking : To criticize or comment on another's text line by line, usually in the text. For honesty it is customary to use a different type, font size, colour, etc, to make clear whose work is what.  I use a fisking style to indicate comments even on my own work , as above with "hoover"


Others:
OD’d (OverDosed ) on a drug. This is more of a semieuphemism. 
accessauthor, impactdialogue, used as verbs.
Oddly, the noun incentive seems to be breeding two  rival  verbs: To incent and to incentivize. Let me fisk myself : Personally, I hate the sound of this latter word!


Firewall (internet cortafuegos)an obvious metaphor  for internet from buildings, which still have them.

-> Paywall : it stops you accessing  internet contents you have to pay for !



Gadget and its American variant form widget (Cf  UK"guarantee" and USA"warranty" etc)  , for some sort of new fashionable knacky tool or appliance, are now being applied to things online ! Visitor counters, onscreen tamagochis and the like. Once they become ordinary and everyday , people stop calling them gadgets -  postWWII, microwaves and electric mixers were gadgets!

Do you remember the  French  "Inspector Gadget"TV cartoons?
He was a Cyborg, from CYBERnetic ORGanism (mostly human, but with bits of his body replaced by machinery -including Gadgets!  A Robocop who maintained his personal identity.) click here for an interesting discussion:
http://podictionary.com/?p=451
An exercise for you:
Distinguish between
Robots
Androids,
Golems, 
Zombies,
Doppelgangers 
Changelings
Frankensteins ( originally: a Frankenstein's monster)
Cyborgs
Avatars
Waldos
Don't be too pernickety*: many native speakers use these somewhat loosely and interchangebly, to the despair of Purists! For example, the use of 'droids(=Androids) for robots in Star Wars!*in usa, persnickety =nitpicking, picky, neverpleased, perfectionist...



And there're plenty more!


Added later. Why is internet spam called "spam"?
Well spam was British tinned - meat?
It was pinkish, made of meat - what sorts of meat, god and the makers alone knew - ground to a very fine powder, and cooked to a sort of jelly It was textureless, nearly tasteless, sort of like adult babyfood....
Any Brit  born after about 1920 up to my generation and until very recently had it  in institutions, cheap cafes, at home....
It was anonymous, ubiquitious, unavoidable, and endless, let alone endlessly sliceable in endless identical slices.
You can see how calling internet spam "spam" became universal almost overnight!
-->spam , uncountable mass noun, to spam, spamming, a spammer, etc etc
Americans  - especially nerdish computerminded americans - were great fans of the British "Monty Python" 
So they say this sketch was the inspiration for using the word this way! 




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