Come on Webster

[M'Sharak]

As time goes on the language will change naturally, as it always has done. The dictionary documents the change, it doesn't enforce it.

I agree. I don't think the dictionary in English has ever meant to be a list of "this is what the English language should be" (I think the French might have such a system but I read about that ages ago so I can't remember the details).

(You may be thinking of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, which is an official dictionary of the French language.)

<snip>

Brevity and shorthand are two different things. It's entirely possible to be textually economical without being forced to resort to TLA shorthand. Most of what I see when using Twitter is written in plain English.

Yeah. It may be because I tend to follow a lot of journalists and the like, but most of what I see on Twitter is actually very good English. I generally try to avoid shorthand unless absolutely necessary when tweeting, myself.

I generally do, also. Somewhat amusing, however, is that the one person I follow who does use text-speak with some frequency is a fairly well-known scientist and recent recipient of a Distinguished Alumni Award from CalTech.

<snip>

Brevity and shorthand are two different things. It's entirely possible to be textually economical without being forced to resort to TLA shorthand. Most of what I see when using Twitter is written in plain English.

True enough. I guess what I'm saying is I tend to be long-winded and I haven't been able to wrap my mind around leetspeak or text speak. I just personally can't get myself to do it.

I've got just enough of a handle on both to be able to make out what's being said when someone else uses them. I'll use them myself only very occasionally (most often for humor value, though not always - every now and then, something like "w00t!" conveys exactly the sense of what I'm trying to get across.)

 

[Owain Taggart]

Oh, I do too with the more common ones. But I do get annoyed when I'm on an MMO and someone who thinks they're so hot calls someone a noob. I hate that term, because it carries a negative connotation to it. Everyone starts out somewhere, so there's no need for people to be rude to players who may not have as much experience as them, and ironically they end up not being very social when they do that. The term newbie or newb is much better and doesn't have any aggressive overtones.

 

[trampledamage]

Yeah, but that's not a complaint about new words, that's a complaint about other people's arrogance. If N00b hadn't been invented, you'd have had the same disdain applied to newbie, or beginner.

 

[BlobVanDam]

Crap like this in the dictionary annoys me so much. My generation is watering down the English language to the point where it's just going to be downright broken by the time I'm an old man.
Before you know it, they'll add "your" as a legitimate spelling of "you're".
Just because it's common right now doesn't mean it's right, or belongs in our dictionary. A lot of the stupid year to year buzzwords they add will be long forgotten in a decade or two.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Crap like this in the dictionary annoys me so much. My generation is watering down the English language to the point where it's just going to be downright broken by the time I'm an old man.
Before you know it, they'll add "your" as a legitimate spelling of "you're".
Just because it's common right now doesn't mean it's right, or belongs in our dictionary. A lot of the stupid year to year buzzwords they add will be long forgotten in a decade or two.

In which case they will take them out. Stuff gets taken out of the dictionary all the time as obsolete.

 

[Nerdius Maximus]

Kids are already dumbed down becuase of how we talk and text. My teachers always used to say that the biggest thing they hate about grading essays or reports is becuase kids used slang and texting language in their papers. Why oh why is it now in the dictionary, or did you add a bad english in the back? Its one thing to type it on here or on a cellphone, but in the dictionary. I am losing faith in humans I swear, between ain't in this, I think its time for a new dictionary distributor.

You should really make sure your grammar and spelling are cool before before you go off on tirades like this.

 

[BlobVanDam]

Crap like this in the dictionary annoys me so much. My generation is watering down the English language to the point where it's just going to be downright broken by the time I'm an old man.
Before you know it, they'll add "your" as a legitimate spelling of "you're".
Just because it's common right now doesn't mean it's right, or belongs in our dictionary. A lot of the stupid year to year buzzwords they add will be long forgotten in a decade or two.

In which case they will take them out. Stuff gets taken out of the dictionary all the time as obsolete.

I just feel that a word should have endured for a little longer than the fad pop culture phase to be eligible for inclusion in any respected dictionary. Because of the ever changing nature of language, they should take this into account when deciding what is and isn't considered a word/term. And with the internet, language is arguably evolving faster than ever. I think this should make them even more wary of adding new terms, rather than more carefree with it.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Well someone did say that OMG is over 16 years old. So that is a bit of enduring right there, more than one generation uses it.

 

[BlobVanDam]

Fair enough, although has it been popular for those 16 years? I know it has been around a while as far as internet terms go, so I don't have a major issue with the inclusion of that term, since it's just an acronym of a term that's been around forever anyway.
But there are other terms making their way into the dictionary in the past couple of years that are more specific to Twitter and Facebook that I have issue with, so I was referring the the general trend, rather than OMG specifically.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Once again: "OMG" is not an acronym.

 

[Miss Chicken]

According to the definition given in the Merriam-Webster dictionary OMG would be an acronym.

There it says

: a word (as NATO, radar, or laser) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term; also : an abbreviation (as FBI) formed from initial letters

 

[BlobVanDam]

Once again: "OMG" is not an acronym.

Initialism. Is that better?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Very well. Language evolves.

However, in this case it is unfortunate, because if the "evolution" sticks, a specific type of abbreviation will have no distinctive word.

The wiki on Acronym_and_initialism contains the following passage.

Although the term acronym is widely used to describe any abbreviation formed from initial letters,[3] most dictionaries define acronym to mean "a word" in its original sense,[4][5][6] while some include a secondary indication of usage, attributing to acronym the same meaning as that of initialism.[7][8][9] According to the primary definition found in most dictionaries, examples of acronyms are NATO (pronounced /ˈneɪtoʊ/), scuba (/ˈskuːbə/), and radar (/ˈreɪdɑr/), while examples of initialisms are FBI (/ˌɛfˌbiːˈaɪ/) and HTML (/ˌeɪtʃˌtiːˌɛmˈɛl/).[4][8][10]

So you can see for yourself that this is a justified assertion, the references are:

[4] ^ a b "acronym". The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1991), Oxford University Press. p. 12: "a word, usu[ally] pronounced as such, formed from the initial letters of other words (e.g. Ernie, laser, Nato)".
[5] ^ "acronym" "Webster's Online Dictionary (2001)", accessed Oct 7, 2008: Acronym "A word formed from the initial letters of a multi-word name."
[6] ^ "acronym" "Cambridge Dictionary of American English", accessed Oct 5, 2008: "a word created from the first letters of each word in a series of words."
[7] ^ "acronym." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, accessed May 2, 2006: "a word (as NATO, radar, or laser) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term; also: an abbreviation (as FBI) formed from initial letters: see initialism "
[8] ^ a b Crystal, David (1995). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-55985-5. p. 120: Its encyclopedic entry for Abbreviation contains an inset entitled "Types of Abbreviation," which lists Initialisms, followed by Acronyms, which he describes simply as "Initialisms pronounced as single words" but then adds "However, some linguists do not recognize a sharp distinction between acronyms and initialisms, but use the former term for both."
[9] ^ "acronym". Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (2003), Barnes & Noble. ISBN 0-7607-4975-2. "1. a word created from the first letter or letters of each word in a series of words or a phrase. 2. a set of initials representing a name, organization, or the like, with each letter pronounced separately, as FBI for Federal Bureau of Investigation."
[10] ^ "acronym" Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. OED Online Oxford University Press. Accessed May 2, 2006.

IMO, the best dictionaries will indicate that usage making no distinction between the two is inferior. This is in accordance with my remarks upthread that dictionaries are of value only when they list common usage, even when that usage should also be described as incorrect.

 

[Miss Chicken]

If that is your opinion, it is fine by me. However I do not believe that people who decide to refer to both initialisms and acronyms as 'acronyms' are wrong. The only difference between some acronyms and an initialism is that the acronym can be pronounced.

Would you call JPEG an initialism or an acromyn (seeing it has features of both definitions)?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

If that is your opinion, it is fine by me. However I do not believe that people who decide to refer to both initialisms and acronyms as 'acronyms' aren't wrong. The only difference between some acronyms and an initialism is that the acronym can be pronounced.

I appreciate that it is inappropriate to be too critical. One point I am making is that if two words mean exactly the same thing, then one is effectively redundant. The word "acronym" was invented to describe a particular kind of abbreviation, one that could be pronounced as a word according to the standard patterns of pronunciation. If this distinction is lost, then the expressive power of language is reduced, which is the main point. This loss is the rationale for being critical, under the premise that greater expressive power in language is better than lesser.

Would you call JPEG an initialism or an acromyn (seeing it has features of both definitions)?

Scholars cannot yet agree on a term. However, if it were up to me, I would call it a

quasiacronym.
​

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Fair enough, although has it been popular for those 16 years? I know it has been around a while as far as internet terms go, so I don't have a major issue with the inclusion of that term, since it's just an acronym of a term that's been around forever anyway.

I got online in '97 and it was in usage on mailing lists then. I remember having to figure out what it meant. I remember it was common for sites to have an internet dictionary for newbies explaining LOL and ROTF and OMG and IMHO etc.. heh I still see people asking what these are now and then.

I've also noticed I use what is now antiquated netspeak at times. For instance I often use iirc and people ask me what it is.. it seems to have fallen out of common usage. I have not seen <weg> used in years. I also constantly use the old RPG form for action, putting an action between double colons.

:: waxes nostalgic ::

No one uses that any more from what I can tell and in fact I have to put a space after my double colons or it can trigger an emote on forums if certain letters follow it.

I cling to the past!

 

[thestrangequark]

Crap like this in the dictionary annoys me so much. My generation is watering down the English language to the point where it's just going to be downright broken by the time I'm an old man.
Before you know it, they'll add "your" as a legitimate spelling of "you're".

It is not watering down the language. I'd argue the opposite, in fact. Every time we add new words we are enriching our language. If you really care so much about preserving some "ideal" point in the evolution of the language why not go back to speaking Old English. If we judge the "goodness" of a language by it's richness and efficiency then clearly English as is spoken today is inferior to Old English, to French, to Spanish, and to any other language that has various words for 'you' that indicate the relationship of the speaker to the one spoken to. (English used to used them: thee, thou, thine, etc. but they have fallen out of favor.)
Or you could switch to AAVE (Ebonics). After all, in many ways it is more efficient than Standard English. For example, if I said in standard English, "He is working," you wouldn't know weather I meant he is working at the moment, or that he has a job. In AAVE, "He working," and "He be working," make that distinction. One could just as easily conclude that Ebonics is "better" than Standard English as one could conclude that words like "LOL" and "OMG" are "worse" than Standard English.

Also, your you're/your example is bad because writing "your" for "you're" is a grammatical error that interferes with the meaning of a phrase. Therefore, it is completely unrelated to words like LOL and OMG which have definite and understood meanings.

As I said before, languages evolve with time. They don't get better or worse, they just change. If people want to whine about it they ought to read a few linguistics texts or take a course first so at least they know what they're talking about.

 

[BlobVanDam]

Crap like this in the dictionary annoys me so much. My generation is watering down the English language to the point where it's just going to be downright broken by the time I'm an old man.
Before you know it, they'll add "your" as a legitimate spelling of "you're".

It is not watering down the language. I'd argue the opposite, in fact. Every time we add new words we are enriching our language. If you really care so much about preserving some "ideal" point in the evolution of the language why not go back to speaking Old English. If we judge the "goodness" of a language by it's richness and efficiency then clearly English as is spoken today is inferior to Old English, to French, to Spanish, and to any other language that has various words for 'you' that indicate the relationship of the speaker to the one spoken to. (English used to used them: thee, thou, thine, etc. but they have fallen out of favor.)
Or you could switch to AAVE (Ebonics). After all, in many ways it is more efficient than Standard English. For example, if I said in standard English, "He is working," you wouldn't know weather I meant he is working at the moment, or that he has a job. In AAVE, "He working," and "He be working," make that distinction. One could just as easily conclude that Ebonics is "better" than Standard English as one could conclude that words like "LOL" and "OMG" are "worse" than Standard English.

Also, your you're/your example is bad because writing "your" for "you're" is a grammatical error that interferes with the meaning of a phrase. Therefore, it is completely unrelated to words like LOL and OMG which have definite and understood meanings.

As I said before, languages evolve with time. They don't get better or worse, they just change. If people want to whine about it they ought to read a few linguistics texts or take a course first so at least they know what they're talking about.

I'm not against adding words because they're new and because language is changing. The dictionary is just far too quick to jump on fad buzzwords, rather than the overall evolution of the language. Even terms like OMG and LOL have only endured 15 or so years. In the history of language this is nothing. That said, I do accept that OMG and LOL are at the point where they can be accepted as dictionary definitions, but in previous years there have been far more recent terms allowed that shouldn't have been included, and only been popularized in the past 5 years at most. This I find ridiculous.
The verb Google I feel is perfectly acceptable, because it's become literally synonymous with internet searching, and understand by several generations. This is a perfectly reasonable term to add to the dictionary, despite being relatively recent. But I believe they've even included Twitter terms in the dictionary now (I could be wrong, but there were definitely site specific terms in there, so the point remains). These terms are specific to one site. Sites come and go. These are not words that have earned a pace in the dictionary.
I'm not saying a new word has to have been around since the times of Shakespeare to be deemed worthy of addition, but the dictionary is just jumping on trends to justify releasing it every year, and to try to make a big deal of it.

As for my grammatical error example, I recognize the difference, and it's a bit of a different argument. I don't have any dictionary specific examples to back up my claims here, so it's mostly just doomsday predictions.
My point was that it is as widespread within my generation as any other texting term or abbreviation, and becoming accepted due to ignorance. What if it comes to the point where literally nobody knows the difference and accepted? Does this too fall under evolution of language? Not all change is for the better or enriching to our language.

As I said, this point was baseless in terms of the dictionary argument, so maybe I'm extrapolating way too far here, but it really is getting to the point where these are accepted just from not knowing otherwise, so who's to stop them from being accepted in the future?

(You may have realized by now that I'm extremely cynical, so take everything I say with that in mind )

 

[thestrangequark]

^By accepting the very cynical point of view, I can see where you're coming from. It is awfully cynical, though! I mean, language is an innate characteristic of humanity. It is vital to our functioning as individuals and as a society (for examples of how vital it is even on the individual lesson, just take a look at what happens to children who have no language). It would take a massive change in the very nature of our being for language to devolve as people seem to fear it is doing.

I also must admit my own tendency to get a bit touchy on this subject, the reason being that usually when people gripe about the devolution of the English language it is a symptom of complete ignorance about what language actually is, or a symptom of either a deeply rooted racism or classism -- "I don't mind black people, but that street language they speak..."

I have no patience for that.

 

[KJbushway]

Kids are already dumbed down becuase of how we talk and text. My teachers always used to say that the biggest thing they hate about grading essays or reports is becuase kids used slang and texting language in their papers. Why oh why is it now in the dictionary, or did you add a bad english in the back? Its one thing to type it on here or on a cellphone, but in the dictionary. I am losing faith in humans I swear, between ain't in this, I think its time for a new dictionary distributor.

You should really make sure your grammar and spelling are cool before before you go off on tirades like this.

Hey, I never said I was perfect. I hope more people have far better writing skills than I.