Is the youth trashing our language?
After reading an article about how the youth changes the written langage published in 2014 by Irena Güttel under the title “Bäm! Nom! Nom!” in the “Mitteldeutsche Zeitung”, a pretty big German newspaper outlet, I thought to myself I’d want to share this information with you, because you are the culprits for this change in language. This also links perfectly with some of the topics of our German classes: The transformation of language.
Let’s speak out the obvious: Writing colloquially in a WhatsApp chat is most likely not degrading your language skills. Which is also proven by a study conducted by a Swiss linguist. But why do our parents still worry about it? This could be because of the recent developments in online media: Online media itself started to use colloquial terms, which might upset those, who are not in the generation which imprinted the online slang. Many people who want to conserve the language just see that it changes into a simpler form of itself, that does not obey the rules of the current language. These developments include abbreviating words or expressions, leaving out prepositions and pronouns and neglecting spelling and syntax. These changes clearly degrade the language in a formal aspect but WhatsApp, Twitter etc. is not formal and the aforementioned study shows that most developing teens you clearly understand when to write formal and when not. But still, experts say written texts are getting less formal and this development is caused by new media like WhatsApp.
What do you think about the worries of the conservative? Do you think they are justified or do they just want to hold onto something, which change was long overdue?
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