
The Totes Amazesh Way Millennials Are Changing the English Language - nikolay
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/the-totes-amazesh-way-millennials-are-changing-the-english-language/
======
trjordan
I was talking design with a friend yesterday, and she said something
interesting: "The reason all these companies have cute logos is to remind you
that they're easy to use. Rounded corners and scratchy infographics conveys
that this is simple software, even if it's doing a lot behind the scenes."

As the article points out, 140 characters is not what's driving this. If
you're using standard English everywhere, your Facebook posts sound like your
cover letters, and that's weird. For a generation who's been dubbed "amiable"
as one of the highest virtues, this isn't OK. Figuring out ways to invent
slang so it cleanly translates to written text is pretty hard. This is a
pretty clever solution to that: anybody who's a native speaker can do it, if
you read it out loud, it serializes / deserializes pretty well, and it's
novel.

FWIW, I'm 30, and I do know people who talk / tweet like this. It's mostly
done sarcastically, though when you do it all the time, is it really
sarcastic?

~~~
inanutshellus
> It's mostly done sarcastically, though when you do it all the time, is it
> really sarcastic?

Anecdotally, it seems that this is how a lot of new phrasing is spread. It
starts off funny, then ironically as an inside joke, then it's just wrote.

My little sister started tapping her index and middle fingers together to make
a hash symbol while saying "hashtag [whatever]". Started out as a joke, making
a bit of fun of some tv show or something and at the same time pointing out
that she "got" the reference... and before she knew it it was second nature.

~~~
mercer
Good observation. I remember 'lol' becoming popular and it was mainly used
ironically. Now it's normal and I only vaguely notice when people much older
than myself use it.

------
pnathan
Dude, that's so hip. All those people grooving to the new vibe.

I think it's worth noting that different socioeconomic classes have developed
their own vernacular, and thus, it's slightly foggy of the Post to not comment
on the population surveyed.

For the more academically minded among us who have time in their day to watch,
here's the academic talk given on this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cJoiGQ7yj0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cJoiGQ7yj0)
\- I don't have time to watch it now, but _totes_ will later.

~~~
DanielStraight
See also: [http://opencuny.org/laurenspradlin/the-morphophonology-of-
to...](http://opencuny.org/laurenspradlin/the-morphophonology-of-totes/)

The presentation is really good:
[http://opencuny.org/laurenspradlin/files/2016/01/Totes-
LSA-S...](http://opencuny.org/laurenspradlin/files/2016/01/Totes-LSA-Spradlin-
Jones-2016-pdf.pdf)

This is really interesting too, from the same author:
[http://opencuny.org/laurenspradlin/class/](http://opencuny.org/laurenspradlin/class/)
It's basically a phonology version of the card game Set.

------
callmeed
I'm a 40 y/o proud GenX'er (best generation ever!) who has a 21 y/o daughter
AND just went back to university to finish my degree–so I'm knee-deep in
Millennials.

In my experience, Millennials _don 't_ talk like this _in-person_. I do see a
little bit of it in SnapChat, YikYak and Instagram. In fact, my wife says
"totes" more than any 20-something I've witnessed. Other "words" I've seen
used a lot during app communication are "bruh", "fam", and "af".

But when I observe 2 Millennials talking in person, the only way they butcher
the English language is by using the word "LIKE" 4 times per sentence. Makes
me cringe every time!

~~~
jdp23
Yeah, but it's not like this is new behavior or like anything, like,
unprecedented or something like that....

~~~
icebraining
Gag me with a spoon!

------
vonklaus
> _There’s a way that young people talk these days, and it’s totes hilars. You
> see it on Twitter a lot._

Makes a lot of sense. Speaking to other humans in real life maps perfectly to
ideation, generating that into text, and then uploading it to a website that
has a 160char limit. Speaking requires a lot of effort because not only do you
think of what you want to say, but then you have to _verbalize it_.

Online, people obviously have to do the first part, but it is so much _easier_
to then find all of the keys associated with an individual word and input them
on the per sentence basis, plus you get to include proper punctuation and
additional characters which makes this way easier.

This article is super interesting. Language hasn't evolved or changed (even
slightly) in the preceding hundred years. It's really weird to think we have
been using the same language that came out of Egypt in 2690 b.c. In fact, we
still use the same hieroglyphs that adorned the walls of the great pyramid of
Giza.

It is pretty amazing if you think about it. From cave paintings, to papyrus
scrolls and eventually to Gutenberg's PP, shit even with the digital
communications and texting in the 80's and 90's, language has stayed the same.

If this language was good enough for Shakespeare, millenials, the people who
often pick up the physical Washington Times everyday, should think twice
before foraging on with these nonsensical changes.

Also, the world is more closed now than ever, so ideas often spread slower.
Which makes this even more astounding!

------
sp332
As a millennial, I'm pretty sure this isn't my generation but the next one
down. Don't know if they have a name yet.

~~~
dragontamer
As a millennial who talks with the next generation relatively often (younger
cousins and the like), I don't think they talk like what was described in the
article.

BTW: I've heard the term "Generation Net", as in the generation that grew up
after the explosion of AOL / Internet. Generation Net is younger than AOL and
never knew a world without the internet.

In my experience, "Generation Net" types with more proper english... pretend
to be older, so that they can be taken more seriously online. Without pictures
or face-to-face contact, "Generation Net" plays on equal grounds among us on
the internet / online forums.

From an online perspective, "Generation Net" is growing up faster than us.
They have to deal with griefers in their Minecraft and swatters on their
streams on a regular basis. Their face-to-face social skills seem a bit
stunted, but that could be only because they're awkward teenagers right now.

~~~
icebraining
What year ranges are we talking about? Millennials are themselves sometimes
called the "Net Generation".

------
webkike
I suppose I'm a millennial, but I'm really struggling to find a single person
that actually talks like this.

~~~
gagege
It's not millenials. I think it's post-millenials which doesn't have a name
yet.

~~~
icebraining
Is it?
[https://twitter.com/search?q=totes+emosh](https://twitter.com/search?q=totes+emosh)

~~~
webkike
All of these people look at least 30

~~~
icebraining
Right, not post-millennials.

------
ericzawo
This type of rhetoric about how "the kids" talks comes up every 20 years.
Remember "radical"?

~~~
strictnein
Totally shredded that. Ripped it up phat!

~~~
Zikes
Tubular, dudes!

~~~
gagege
That was sick, bro!

------
api
It'd be surprising if the Internet revolution didn't drastically alter
languages. The printing press did the same, standardizing them and eliminating
many font eccentricities that did not translate well into movable type.

What I see in these is (1) shortening of things to make them easier to type on
phones, and (2) the use of a lot of whimsical spellings to convey emotion.
People are communicating so much right now via just text that they're going to
strain to emote through the medium.

------
nikolay
The main reason I posted this is to consider the NLP implication of it.

------
adrusi
I think this particular pattern is a fad. It's interesting linguistically
because the rules are relatively simple, and it's easy enough to analyze it in
the context of changing social dynamics, but most people writing like this are
doing so to declare membership in some particular social group and as it
becomes more popular it will no longer be a status symbol and fall out of
favor. The linguisitic construction might survive to serve a different purpose
later though. Even now I see people mimicking it to convey a certain type of
sarcasm (and I suspect almost everyone who uses it is at least somewhat
sarcastic about it).

But the point that trjordan brings up in their top-level comment, "Figuring
out ways to invent slang so it cleanly translates to written text is pretty
hard," gets closer to the core observation, which is that the new phenomenon
of informal written communication transmitted in small chunks (IM and tweets,
mostly) will have, and already has had, a profound impact on language.

Another observation: I spoken communication I try to avoid phrases like "to be
honest," "if I recall correctly," etc. because they should be implied: "to be
honest" only indicates that previously you may have been lying, and "if I
recall correctly" insults your correspondant's ability listen to you
critcically — of course "if you recall correctly," everything is "if you
recall correctly." But in IM, dropping an extra "tbh" or "iirc" or "idk" into
your message changes the inflection of the message, and in a medium so devoid
of inflection, that small change can significantly impact meaning. Such
phrases are the part of the "body language" of textual communication.

And I notice these communication spilling over into spoken communication. When
I speak with somebody now, especially if I usually communicate with them over
text, "to be honests" abound!

I predict that in 50 years we'll see that instant messaging has transformed
human communication more than the telephone or printing press ever did. The
shift will be second only to the rise of mass-literacy.

------
strictnein
Sweet Meteor of Death, I welcome your fiery embrace.

------
pklausler
Some of these patterns are useful, especially to the careful listener. For
example, the tech world has many helpful people who flag sentences that can be
safely ignored by the listener by starting them with "So, ... ".

------
phillipamann
This is something I talk about with my friend who is doing a PhD in
linguistics. I noticed as well that the internet is changing the English
language. The rampant globalization that came with the internet combined with
English being the defacto language of the internet has allowed it to change.
It would be interested to mine Twitter and a few other sources and try to
observe how English is changing.

I suspect if you mined Twitter, you would see a 'dumbing down' of English due
to the constraints of Twitter. How one would quantify 'dumbing down' is a
challenge (if it hasn't been solved already). However, I am more interested in
how this 'Twitter effect' cascades to other areas of English.

There are other implications of the internet too I'd love to study but these
questions are relevant to this article.

~~~
jacquesm
> English being the defacto language of the internet

That's quite a statement. There is a huge volume of Spanish content that you'd
never realize was there until you typed in a Spanish query into a search
engine. The various language webs are for the most part islands. English is a
little bit over-represented on the web but this is mostly because of the fact
that in the early days the English web moved quite rapid and other countries
slowly caught up as they came online.

Over the long haul this will normalize to representation roughly proportional
on the world population. For our profession English will always give you a
head-start.

------
tosseraccount
Men loven of propre kynde newefangelnesse [...] And loven novelries.

-Chaucer ( _Squire 's Tale_)

------
pklausler
I will happily support all of these changes to the written English language if
the millennials would please try to rein in the vocal fry that's made NPR
unlistenable.

~~~
eutropia
I believe what's made NPR unlistenable is that you've decided a particular
vocal affectation is objectively bad and annoying, so you notice it more and
let the concept bother you. Personally, I can't help but smirk any time a
talking head on cable news uses their `important newsperson voice`, but not
everyone feels that way.

------
dominotw
I would be curious to see if someone has studied how twitter has changed
english language and grammer rules due to its 150 char limit

------
amyjess
I'm technically a Millennial (born 1984), but everything about Millennial
culture just makes me cringe.

Same with this obsession with "artisanal" stuff, walkable neighborhoods, and
the like.

~~~
shiftpgdn
What's wrong with wanting a walkable neighborhood and things produced by
craftsmen instead of Chinese mass laborers?

~~~
hueving
Chinese mass laborers make In-N-Out burgers?

Walkable neighborhoods aren't particularly a problem, it's that the people
that advocate for it pretty aggressively attack suburban living's support
system to do so (cars, freeways, etc).

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
Cars and freeways are both examples of extreme largesse and horrible community
planning. Freeways are some of the world's most dangerous public territories.
Why would you discourage individuals from criticizing and judging these
outdated, expensive, pollution death traps?

------
yarrel
Awesome!

Also groovy.

And formidable.

------
benten10
As usual, the trick while reading these is to replace 'millennial' with
'people younger and more attractive than I am'. Also applies to people who
begin sentences with 'I am technically a millennial but..'.

Wasn't it plato or Socrates who complained about those damn young people who
are good for nothing, complain about everything, and can't even speak proper
Greek?

To their credit though, the Greek civilization DID fall soon-ish, so maybe the
YOUNGs are _really_ screwy idiots who are NOT on fleek.

EDIT: Apparently I'd misunderstood the meaning of 'on fleek' for a long time.

~~~
pklausler
> replace 'millennial' with 'people younger and more attractive than I am'.

... which in my case could then just be shortened to "human".

------
AndrewUnmuted
> it’s following all the rules of English.

Doesn't English require proper spelling of English words?

------
Swizec
140 char lims are tuff k?

