September 6, 2011 | 6 Comments

Twitterriffic! Or Not, As The Case May Be.

A few weeks ago I posted a blog about the impact social media and networks was having on the dictionary. With words such as “re-tweet” being officially recognised as a daily term and added to the infamous Oxford Dictionary, social media has made waves in the use of language.

Twitter, more so than any other network, offers a great array of new words and phrases never before heard.

How many of you have signed into Twitter in the morning and tweeted something along the lines of…

“Good Morning Tweetverse!”

“Tweetverse” or “TwitterVerse”… Yes, this is a well known and seen Twitter word, for some reason. Who knew that Twitter would become so massive, so strong, so fast, that it would spin off it’s online axis and create it’s own universe complete with its own orbiting ”tweeple” glued to their computers and phones tweeting all day making up stupid words like that. What ever happened to saying a general hello without making up ludicrous words? Yes, I understand it’s a tweet and it’s on Twitter and directed to other Twitter users, but you wouldn’t walk through the streets shouting out, “Good morning real world!” for the simple fact that you would be considered insane. And rightly so. So why do it online?

“Tweeps” and/or “Tweeple”. This is a mix of that equally as annoying “modern” language you hear the kids with jeans hanging off their backside saying and Twitter language. “Peeps” and Twitter users enrolled into one. This one is a little more understandable than Tweetverse as you are targeting Twitter users and not making them into their own intergalactic species but still an annoying term none the less. Just because you tweet occasionally, doesn’t mean you are defined by tweeting.

“Twisticuffs” is an up and comer to. People fighting over Twitter entwined with that aged old English phrase for fighting- “fisty cuffs”. Even bickering over Twitter has it’s own unique definition now.

“Twagiarism”- This is, quite simply, a plagiarised tweet. So tweeting an idea, a thought or an expression which is not your own but taken from someone else. In fact, this landed Miss Universe contestant, Vasuki Sunkavalli in trouble very recently. Tweeting political comments she was watching on the news.

I am not alone in my distaste for all Twitter related jargon.

It’s not universally popular though – the book Twitter for Dummies notes “many avid users actually find [tw- words] rather annoying”.

Decline In Language

I do understand that this is all light hearted use of language on a particular network. This article isn’t so much about the fun use of these words on a light hearted day, but the sad decline in language as a whole and how this sort of thing does not necessarily help. Gone are the days where you can write a letter with the correct words. “Was” is now “Woz”, which it’s stupid as it’s harder to type and still has the same number of letters. “Innit” has replaced “Isn’t it?” “Da” has replaced “The”, in fact, the list goes on. This poor decline is what the next generation of children will be accustomed to. I think it’s a sad fact that language standards have fallen. Maybe it’s just evolved, like many things in time but it does make people sound silly, or at the very least, unprofessional at times.

~ Articles mentioned in this post: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14785537

~ Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alcalaenfotos

Tags: Dictionary, featured, language, social media, twitter

Author:Nikki

I'm Nikki. I guest post on various blogs and websites about all things social media, technology and marketing.

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http://wearesocialpeople.com Tammy Kahn Fennell

Hey! Twitterverse is fine – I have used it many a time! Twisticuffs, I’ll give you that one – never heard of it…
~Tammy, CEO @MarketMeSuite:twitter
http://twitter.com/digitaliprod Digital I

‘fraid I have to take exception to “innit” as “tweetish”. “Innit” or ‘idnit” has been a colloquialism in rural Appalachia and parts of the American South since colonial times. It is, of course, improper modern grammar, but there is some evidence to consider it as part of the spoken “Queen’s English” of the 18th century, which includes words like “ain’t” as well.

Then again, we in the Southern US speak a very different version of English, which frequently baffles our own countrymen as well. As I have often had to explain to the northern visitor, the word “Y’all” is actually singular. “All Y’all” is plural.

And yes, I did just coin the phrase “tweetish” to refer to the linguistic mutations that are growing out of social networking. Please make sure I get proper credit when the chaps from Oxford add that to the book next year.
- http://twitter.com/Nikki__Peters Nikki Peters
  
  Hi Larry!
  
  When I referred to “innit”, that was in general acknowledgement to the bad use of language in general these days, not specifically over Twitter.
  
  It’s sad that language is not considered as important as maybe it used to be. I know my grandparents hated the new words we would come out with, they considered it lazy and horrible. I understand that now. Language is sacred, children today take advantage of perfectly good words and replace them with lazy new ones.
  - http://twitter.com/digitaliprod Digital I
    
    I object when I see “online” jargon and techniques used in “regular” writing, because it is indicative of either laziness or ignorance (or both). The ubiquitous “lol” has crept into our language, but then so has “FYI”, and that predates even broadly available e-mail.
    
    Perhaps an even greater confusion results when persons use or begin using one of these anagrams whose meaning has not been generally agreed upon.
    
    For example, I had a friend repeatedly respond to facebook posts of mine with “FTW”. Apparently someone, somewhere, has decided this phrase means “for the win!” Yet in the pre-internet world, I have seen that particular anagram used for ” the World!” and I do not believe it was a local variation. In a similar vein, the current US President a few months ago talked about “Winning the Future!” using the anagram “WTF”. Again, the anagram has commonly be in use to stand for “What the ?”, a faux-pas that one would think highly-educated speech-writers and policy advisors would have avoided.
    
    The intelligent and accurate use of language is very important. Language does evolve, but the lack of proper command of it’s use marks one as poorly educated, even if they are not. Our ability to conduct business, gain opportunities, and expand our success is directly tied to how well, or how poorly, we express ourselves.
- http://wearesocialpeople.com Tammy Kahn Fennell
  
  Is that how it works? I always wondered about All Y’all and Y’all!
http://marketmesuite.com Alan Hamlyn

I think its just evolution of language, in this case specifically twitter, generated by the restriction of 140 characters and how popular the service is.

It’s almost like when ‘email’ joined the dictionary, now it seems normal, but go back to when email first game out it would have seemed odd.