How technology has changed the English language - Prezi Presentation

Below is a Prezi presentation created by George Pratt, Jess Diable and I. The Prezi is split into three main sections: abbreviations , new words/phrases and emojis and emoticons. The first and third sections are self explanatory but the second is mainly jsut bullet points so below is a paragraph that explains the new words and phrases slide.

The Oxford English Dictionary has always sought to be progressive and social networking sites have created a real language of the internet. New words circulate much more quickly as a result of the internet, as people see friends, or friends of friends using new words and copy them either face-to-face or on the internet. On the board are some new words and phrases that have entered the Dictionary in the past few years.

• Firstly is the word Phablet. This is a smartphone having a screen, which in terms of size, is bigger than a typical smartphone’s but smaller than a tablet.
• Next is Selfie. This is a photograph that someone takes of themself normally taken with a smartphone or webcam.
• Trolling has been in the news recently mainly due to the rise of trolls on Twitter targeting celebrities. They deliberately post tweets or comments intended to incite an angry response.
• A Hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by the hash sign (#), used on social media sites such as Twitter to identify messages on a specific topic.
• The word Retweet again comes from Twitter and this is when you repost or forward a message posted by another user.
• Google are a multi-billion dollar American company but their name has now been turned into the verb “to Google” which means to search for information about someone or something on the Internet using the search engine Google.

These are just a few examples with many more being added every year. It won’t be long before words such as “faxing” and “video calling” shall be replaced with words such as “Skypeing” and “Facetiming”.