Thanks to the internet and social media the
semantics of English is taking a shift. unlike a language like French in which
words have to go under the scrutiny of l’Academie Francaise before they can be
adopted into standard French, English accepts anything from anywhere by common
usage. Being a grammar nazi in the times we are living in has become a
responsibility; ask one he will tell you how badly he needs a red pen to
underline words on timelines that
seem misplaced.
Nominalization, coinage and other neologisms have
become common in the postmodern era. We all miss those days when black berries and
apples were just fruits. In those days, gingerbread was just a cookie and jellybean
was a sugar candy. When friend was just a noun for what becomes of a person we
have befriended and like was a verb.
It took me sometime to realize that an epic fail was neither a paradox nor sarcasm
however ironic it may sound. Google is now a verb in the Oxford dictionary
although my auto correct still insists that I have to write its first letter in
the upper case. Today tweeting is not confined to the chirping of members of
class aves; in fact, I’d be surprised to know you’re reading this and you do
not tweet.
You are worried by the
current trend? Or interested by a particular fashion trend? You better be
heading to twitter to see what’s actually trending! Talking of trends, remember you will need a
tag for something to start trending. I don’t really mean that you will need to
attach or stick a paper or something, but I suppose it’s something close to
that. But then am afraid else where you might be tagged on photos and posts! Did
I just mention post? Well seems things are murkier than I thought. By post I don’t
mean mail, neither do I mean a job opening nor a piece of wood/metal in a vertical
position like in a goal post. I mean something quite different, like a message
posted on social media. Actually what we do to tweets is post them, perfect
example! Viral isn’t only for infections, it can also be for photos and videos.
Meanwhile, if you carry your notebook
today, you won’t need a pen, how good? However you will be in great trouble if yout notebook’s drive gets a virus unless you have used cloud storage for your back up.
When you see me type : ) I am not trying to
punctuate although I just closed a bracket that I didn’t open, I was only
trying to key in an emoticonJ. Have I told you that in the present
day # has gotten another use apart from denoting a sharp tone in music? Yes,
when we’re chirping tweeting, we do use # and call it a hash tag. This is
just a tip of the ice berg; there are more words that have taken a totally
different semantic path from what used to be the obvious. Words like stumble; have I told you that Stumble Upon is a proper noun today?
I am afraid if we continue with this discussion we might end up with annoying
barbarisms that have no regard for grammar and spelling. We might end up with unintelligible vowel-less lexical items. All in all, that is how dynamic the English language
is.
**italics
- some of the words that have a acquired new meanings
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