Because TLIF is a medical term as well, I’ve decided to try a new acronym. Today we have: Thank Technichally King of the Ice Giants It’s Friday
Which, once it’s all spelled out, is kind of clunky. But the letters might make an interesting bumper sticker. We had this conversation once at home about the early days of chat acronyms. Like LOL and the like. This stemmed from someone telling me I sounded like an AOL brat (back in the days when AOL was THE place to be a brat) and I responded in offence, letting him know I’d been online before brats even knew what AOL was (which was back in the days AOL came on 1.44″ floppy disks and only came with 10 free hours a month and that was enough because who in their right mind needed to be online for more than 10 hours in any given month?)
And the best substitution we came up with was a variation of ROFLMAO (rolling on the floor laughing my ass off). Which was ROFCRS (rolling on the floor committing ritual sepaku – don’t even ask).
I started thinking about comparisons to Shakespeare and all those words he inveted. Did you know in Utah, soda is called pop, but if you say that in the south, all the people look at you funny and some kind of snicker?
Or, if you’d prefer, a study was recently conducted that showed that you can frequently tell in 140 characters or less, what part of they country someone lives in? This research project analyzed tweets from all across the US and found trends not only in the words used, but they way they were mispelled depending on the part of the country the tweeters were in.
Which makes me wonder – with all this access to anyone we want all over the world, how does such a distinct dialect based on region continue to exist? Sure, we interract every day with people face-to-face, but if we’re bringing that online after, how do we know the girl in Australia hasn’t started saying ‘pop’ when she wants a soda?
Or, is it possible that despite all our thoughts and theories about digital content being a globalizing force, that really we’re not as plugged in as we believe we are?
And does a writer have more influence on that global spread of trend than your average person?
The last few lines of your post really got me thinking.
This is also true in the UK (heaps smaller than the US). I’m from Devon and we call tourists ‘grockles’ and if you skive off school it’s ‘mitching’, but people from other parts of the UK will look at me like I’m crazy if I use those words.
I’m from the south of England, but went to university in the north and once when making sandwiches I asked someone to ‘cut the cheese’. They burst out laughing. Apparently that meant to fart.
I think the internet is a fantastic place to celebrate regional dialects and sayings, and I hope it doesn’t dilute to the point where we all speak exactly the same way.
I’m sorry, but I HAVE to ask… How exactly does one commit ritual sepaku whilst rolling on the floor?
I’m with Sarah. We need to know. I hope that we don’t blur our differences too much – I love when the Aussies and the Scots talk, especially.
I think anyone with enough charisma–writer or average person–can influence trends. This was quite the thought-provoking post!
Well, trends do spread quicker in today’s many ways to reach out to people. I think I do pick up certain things from my critique buddies I twitter with–words and phrases I would have never used before. Great thought provoking post! 😀