Twitter provides 'selfies' of evolving language

Twitter and other social media are an immense resource that can offer linguists the opportunity to explore how our words and phrases are changing.

More and more researchers are beginning to work on projects consisting in analysing tweets to catch the next most popular word.

Why Twitter? 

Because its data is public and immediately available. A huge data consisting of around 340 million tweets sent every day, according to Twitter.

Twitter offers records of language mutating in real time and space. Many tweets provide location data and the time they were sent allowing thus to map out the way in which new words become popular and spread.

Because tweets tend to be rather informal, there are a lot of types of creative usages of words. Tweets appear similar to spontaneous speech, making them particularly valuable to the study of the spread of new words and expressions.

Sources: 

• Linguistic researchers begin hunt for the next 'selfie'
• Using social media to find English lexical blends, By P. Cook (PDF)

Sharing is caring

Sharing terminology can only bring more benefits. It helps improving consistency, uniformity and reliability of data. 

The sharing of existing terminological data helps  translators, terminologists, researchers (but I would not exclude students, journalists, web writers  and whoever works with knowledge) to use the right terms even without being experts and preventing them from spending too much time looking for resources, extracting terms and checking their reliability.

Here a list of my favourite resources:

TAUS Data: a cloud platform based on shared translation memories. I use almost every day TAUS Data for technical translations and thank to it I can choose the right term by checking the context (always reliable) and being sure I have selected the right term even without being an expert on the particular subject.

Taas - Cloud Services for Terminology Work: New look for this cloud based portal providing multilingual and collaborative terminology services. Beta version for now, flat design, scroll-down layout, the look of a start-up website expressing the innovative attitude of this project funded by the European Commission and managed by Tatiana Gornostay. By logging-in it is possible to access to the tools such as a look-up tool, a term extractor providing term candidates from various sources, and the possibility to share your terminology with other users.

TermWiki.com: is a collaborative terminology portal that allows users to search, upload, translate and share terms and definitions with other users. I have to say that the staff behind this portal is really nice, friendly and always ready to help you to improve their tools to better suit your needs. My favourite tool is the TermWiki GlossaryWidget and I have one on this blog.

The added value of the websites I listed above is that they are making a good job at making terminology sharing easy and intuitive.In this guest post I wrote for Termwiki, I'm describing how much desirable it would be to have a kind of “Apple logic” applied to terminology management.

T

Selfie is the Word of the Year 2013

Infographic of Selfie

Selfie Etymology: No, a Drunken Australian Man Did Not Coin the Word Selfie

What's your word of the year for 2013?

The WOTY fever is starting again. Are we ready for the new Word Of The Year competition? I'm afraid that the Word Of The Year 2013 will be "Twerk" but I definitely prefer "Selfie".

Update - 11 November 2013: Fail, deficit, deadlock, stalemate - 2013’s most used words on the web.

The Global Language Monitor claims ‘404’ - internet code for an online error - as the top word, ‘toxic politics’ the top phrase and Pope Francis the top name in its annual global survey of the English language.

The rankings are based on how many times words, phrases and names were used online throughout the 1.8bn people in the English-speaking world across the last 12 months.

To qualify, the words must have been used at least 25.000 times across all types of media.

19 November 2013 - And the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year for 2013 is ‘selfie'! So, when I wrote this post my gut feeling gave me the right response! I'm a good Word detective..

4 December 2013: Merriam-Webster just announced that “science” had seen the greatest increase in lookups this year.

16 December 2013: Geek has been deemed the word of the year by the Collinsonline dictionary. Geek was chosen as a reminder of how an insult can be transformed into a badge of honour, according to Collins.



Sources: 

• blog.oxforddictionaries
• Global Language Monitor
• Merriam Webster
• Collins online dictionary

The Cupertino Effect

What happens when a computer automatically "corrects" your spelling into something wrong or incomprehensible.

It's a sort of older cousin of the "Damn You, Autocorrect" error that infects even professionally edited text. 

Everybody experiences that stomach-dropping moment when you realise what you sent
wasn’t what you intended to send, and there are no takebacks. It was named by workers for the European Union who noticed that the word "cooperation" often showed up in finished documents as "Cupertino," the name of the California city in which Apple has its headquarters. 

Sources:

• Viewpoint: Why do tech neologisms make people angry?
• The Cupertino Effect: 11 Spell Check Errors that Made it to Press

Twitter: a valuable tool for linguists

The world of technology is shaping the English language, with innovative advances reflected in new terms.

Of course the explosion of social media has accelerated the creation of new words as different cultures and languages interact.

People are writing much more than we used to. The users of online social media produce an extraordinary amount of text each day. This increased use of electronic communication has given us new language forms and expressions largely driven by operational issues and a need to compensate for lack of non-verbal communication. 

Twitter and other social media offer records of language mutating in real time and space: an immense resource that can offer linguists the opportunity to explore how our words and phrases are changing.

Twitter claims that around 340 million tweets are sent every day. Following someone on Twitter, it is possible to see a word at the moment of its coinage. Because tweets tend to be rather informal, there are a lot of types of creative usages of words. 57% of neologisms on Twitter come from blends.

Networds: new terms coined in the environment of social networks (neologism invented by me).

Sources:

• Using social media to find English lexical blends, P.Cook
• Language lessons told through Twitter

SoMoClo

The term illustrates the convergence of social media, mobile and cloud. 

What used to be three siloed technologies have now begun merging, thanks to an infrastructure that allows them to “collapse” into each other and form a new IT construct.

Source: SoMoClo ... huh?

Social media glossary

What is a moblog? What is nptech? and what about splogs?

The social media landscape is fast changing and filled with strange terms to the uninitiated. Here’s a quick guide to some of the terms you may encounter!

Socialbrite.org

Language evolves: from "e-mail" to "email"

The AP Stylebook, the de facto style and usage guide for much of the news media, announced on Friday that the abbreviated term for “electronic mail” is losing a hyphen, and with it, a relic of a simpler time when Internet technology needed to be explained very carefully.

The move follows the AP Stylebook’s decision to change “Web site” to “website” last year, at which time we wrote, “[We] hold our collective breath for other possible updates, such as changing “e-mail” to “email.’”

Since then the recently much more progressive organization also published a set of 42guidelines and definitions for social media, though the future of “e-mail” remained very much in flux.

Today’s news, fittingly enough, was first announced on the AP Stylebook’s Twitter page, where they tweeted: “Language evolves. Today we change AP style from e-mail to email, no hyphen. Our editors will announce it at #ACES2011 today.” Look for the change to be in effect immediately in the online version of the stylebook and in the 2011 print version.

Source:
mashable.com

Keystroke revolution

A rioting demonstration spreading via the Internet and social fora.

It is represented through the image of hands typing on a keyboard getting connected at global level. In particular, this form can be referred to the uprisings which have been bursting out throughout Middle East and Northern African countries since the beginning of 2011.

Espressione che indica una rivoluzione che si è propagata attraverso la Rete e i social forum ove si è sfruttata l’immagine delle mani che operano sulla tastiera del computer per rendere possibile la connessione a livello globale. Tale formula espressiva può riferirsi, nello specifico, alla serie di movimenti di rivolta che dall’inizio dell’anno hanno interessato il Medio Oriente e il Nord Africa.

Source: Englishfor

Twitter Revolution

The online social media have become so important in linking and mobilising activists that the uprising in Tunisia has gained the alternative title of Twitter Revolution.

The name was earlier given to the events in Moldova and Iran in 2009 and all three have also been described as Facebook revolutions, though the name hasn’t stuck in the same way. It’s too early to say which, if any of them, will be identified in the history books as the Twitter Revolution.

Source: Word Wide Words

"I wouldn't know a twitter from a tweeter, but apparently it is very important". H.Clinton

Read also:

#twitterrevolution reforming Egypt in 140 characters?,by Dennis Baron, The Web of Language

Facebookistan

E-cquaintance

A person known to another through online communication only (as via email or Internet social networking)

Source: Merriam Webster

New buzzwords! Sheeple, buzzkill, cheeseball

Automagically: Automatically in a way that seems magical.

Bargainous: Costing less than expected.

Big media: Primary mass communication sources, e.g., TV and the press.

Buzzkil: Person or thing that has a depressing effect.

Carbon credit: Permit allowing a certain amount of carbon dioxide emissions.

Carbon offsetting: Counteraction of CO2 emissions with a corresponding reduction.

Catastrophize: To present a situation as worse than it is.

Cheeseball: Lacking taste or style.

Chillax: To calm down and relax.

Eggcorn: Logical swap of words with similar sounds (from "egg corn" for "acorn").

Flyover states: Central regions of the U.S.

Frenemy: Friend with whom one has frequent conflict.

Gal pal: Female friend.

Green audit: Analysis of a business' environmental impact.

Green-collar: Of or relating to workers in the environmentalist business sector.

Hater: Negative person.

Homeshoring: Moving jobs to employees' homes (from "offshoring").

Hypermiling: Altering a car to maximize its fuel economy.

Locavore: One who primarily eats locally grown food.

Meme: Image, video or phrase passed electronically on the Internet.

Microblog: To post very short entries on a blog.

Overleveraged: Having taken on too much debt.

Own: To utterly defeat or humiliate.

Paywall: Arrangement whereby website access is restricted to paying users only.

Pimp: To make something more showy or impressive.

Rock: To do something in a confident, flamboyant way.

Sheeple: Unquestioning followers (from "sheep" + "people").

Social media: Websites and applications used for social networking.

Soft skills: Attributes that enable someone to interact harmoniously with others.

Toxic debt: Debt that has a high risk of default.

Truthiness: Quality of seeming true.

Turducken: Roast of a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey.

Webisode: Episode or short film made for viewing online.

Zombie bank: Insolvent bank that survives through government support.


Sources: Oxford Dictionary of English; New American Oxford Dictionary; Oxford English Dictionary; Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

Skypeochondria, Fidgetal, Powerpointless

• Fidgetal - blend of finger and digital. Referred to the use of the fingers to provide input above a mobile device.

• MisApp - something going terribly wrong due to over reliance on latest Phone gizmo

• Wikisqueak - sound emitted by diplomat who realises she's sent confidential telegram without proper encryption

• Dreadsheet - spreadsheet containing very bad financial news

• Disgracebook - social networking site advertising user's embarrassing past

• Mobile drone - lover of interminable tedious and public phone conversations

• Sin card - alternative device to fit in mobile for immoral communication

• Powerpointless - universal feeling in room at end of hi-tech executive presentation of negligible value

• Skypeochondria - queasy feeling brought on by obsessive fear of being offline

• Scroogele - search engine for people trying to find cheapest online gifts

Source: BBC, "The future is fidgetal"

Social notworking

Surfing a social networking site instead of working.

Source: Word Spy

Nice to have intermet you

A friendly conversation by e-mail with a new acquaintance.

Source: BBC, "10 of your favourite anti-tech words"

Memail

E-mail I send to myself to remind me to do things.


Source: BBC, "10 of your favourite anti-tech words"

Spamnesia

Failing to reply to e-mails from friends, because your computer thinks they're spam.

Source: BBC, "10 of your favourite anti-tech words"

HMU

Hit Me Up

The internet acronym “Hit Me Up” or HMU as it became to be known, went from being a relatively unknown term in 2009 to one of the most popular trends of 2010. HMU was literally unheard of in 2009, many instances attributed to user error. In May 2009, it was averaging 20 mentions a day, doubling each month to be mentioned in about 1,600 posts a day by the end of the year. Even though it grew quite substantially, it failed to make last years list.

Source: The next Web

iZombie

iPod zombies, a digital undead army lurching through the streets. We may call it the iPod zombie trance, but it's a device-agnostic state, since this living dead horde also consists of iPhone zombies, BlackBerry zombies, and the generic MP3 zombies and cellphone zombies.
The iPod zombie pedestrian isn't alone in needing earbuds and a tiny screen these days. Others in a state of iPod oblivion include iPod zombie joggers, iPod zombie dog walkers, iPod zombie cyclists, and iPod zombie rollerbladers.

iPod pedestrians (or, iPodes­trians) people regularly—you might even say compulsively—read and compose e-mail while walking down the street. But that's not all people do while power walking to their next appointments. They also text, read Facebook and Twitter status updates, scan RSS feeds, and more than anything else, they bliss out to their favorite tunes at unhealthily loud volume levels.

Similarly, in your local Starbucks, you've probably seen your share of laptop zombies who are oblivious to everyone and everything except the screen in front of them.
If walking while texting and other forms of pedestrian inattention were merely comical, no one would worry about them too much. But attention is a zero-sum game, so concentrating on your iPod results in a technological autism or unintentional blindness that can lead to near collisions with fellow pedestrians and actual collisions with street lamps. One study found digital music players to blame for up to 17 accidents every day in the UK.

The preferred term for this among cognitive scientists is inattentional blindness, which they define as "the failure to detect the appearance of an unexpected, task-irrelevant object in the visual field." So if you're zoned out listening to Arcade Fire at top volume (the task) and you fail to see an oncoming vehicle (the unexpected, task-irrelevant object), that's IB, and that's probably trouble, perhaps even death by iPod.

The risks increase if the driver of the car bearing down on you is preoccupied reading or sending text messages, a form of digital drunkenness known as being intexticated. An incredibly dangerous habit, intextication is also called DWT, or driving while texting. If the driver is preoccupied with a cellphone call instead, call it DWY, or driving while yakking—abbreviations that play on the legal term DWI, or driving while intoxicated.

Published on: spectrum.ieee.org

Read also:

Distracted driving buzzwords