{"id":1906,"date":"2014-02-20T10:07:40","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T09:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1906"},"modified":"2015-11-01T12:22:06","modified_gmt":"2015-11-01T11:22:06","slug":"the-linguistic-woes-of-the-1994-time-traveler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1906","title":{"rendered":"The Linguistic Woes of the 1994 Time Traveler"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Progress\"<\/a>Can you imagine going back to the time of Shakespeare? Right now you\u2019re probably shivering with terror as you imagine dealing with the thous and thees and hithers, not to mention wearing tights and having a pointed beard.<\/p>\n

Have you ever thought about what it would be like for someone to visit 2014 from the past? I mean, besides the fact that they\u2019d have to live in a world with Kanye West.<\/p>\n

I am talking about linguistics.<\/p>\n

Language constantly changes and as a language teacher I\u2019ve come to understand that I don’t really teach English, but English as it is at this point in time. So if someone came here from Shakespeare\u2019s time, he would probably be just as terrified of our English as we imagine we\u2019d be of his.<\/p>\n

But in the last 15 years our language has undergone a serious upheaval due to technology, the Internet, and social media. With our dictionary of new, daily-used jargon, the world would be a cacophony of confusion for a time traveler. And I\u2019m not talking about someone from Shakespeare\u2019s time, but someone from 1994. Consider the following.<\/p>\n

Status Update<\/b><\/p>\n

Most probably someone from 1994 would understand these words, but together? Could you imagine 1994 time traveler trying to deduce the current meanings of this phrase by the way we use them?<\/p>\n

Man, he changes his status update five times a day!<\/p>\n

So, he gets in three relationships and breaks up five times a day? His status going from single to involved. Or is he in the hospital? He\u2019s stable, in the ICU, in critical condition?<\/p>\n

Like<\/b><\/p>\n

When I was in college, I had two friends who used to replace the word marijuana<\/i> with pizza<\/i>. So their conversations would revolve around pizza: when is the pizza coming? How much is the pizza? I hope you ordered enough pizza, because we don\u2019t want to run out of pizza. It took me about three months to figure out what the hell was going on (I didn\u2019t want to admit to not being in the know and let\u2019s just say that I would never, em, be sent to spy school).<\/p>\n

I have spent the day eavesdropping in order to pick up real life examples for this post, and I have begun to have the same feeling about the word like<\/i>.<\/p>\n

A real conversation from today:<\/p>\n

A: \u201cI saw that you liked his status.\u201d<\/p>\n

B: \u201cYeah, I figured it would be easier to like it than to explain why I didn\u2019t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A: \u201cWell, I didn\u2019t like it. I don\u2019t like things unless I completely support them.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be clear, this conversation is not unusual, nor is it a ridiculous example of commonly used jargon. So essentially, the 1994 Time Traveler would be walking around as confused about the word like<\/i> as I was my first three months of college about the word pizza<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Still worse, consider the Czech 1994 Time Traveler. As the word like<\/i> has now \u2013 due to Facebook, of course \u2013 bled into Czech to become its own verb: likovat<\/i>. Oh, please imagine the look on his face, and then you may thank me.<\/p>\n

Selfie<\/b><\/p>\n

Judging from what happens in the world, a selfie seems like the natural outcome of giving the world phones with built-in cameras and alcohol. Kim Kardashian has built an entire career on selfies and her total lack of shame.<\/p>\n

Did you know that selfie was voted \u201cword of the year\u201d by Oxford Dictionary, after its use in the last year increased by 17,000%? Yes, a mild jump. Two years ago most people wouldn\u2019t have understood this word, my dad still doesn\u2019t understand it. Now, it\u2019s used on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

Oh, and let\u2019s not forget the heap of spinoffs belfie (butt selfie), helfie (hairstyle selfie), welfie (workout selfie), and drelfie (drunk selfie).<\/p>\n

Consider everyday sentences<\/b><\/p>\n

Just look at the sentences below, think about how many times a day you use some variation of them. And then just imagine being someone who doesn\u2019t understand the main components of the sentences.<\/p>\n

I was going to tweet that, but they didn\u2019t have Wifi at that caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Did you see my post of horses, I tried to tag you? (An actual status update in my newsfeed this morning. Oh, newsfeed is another one!)<\/p>\n

Did you see any of those Katy Perry GIFs? They\u2019re hot.<\/p>\n

Wanna Skype?<\/p>\n

Jabberwocky <\/b><\/p>\n

There\u2019s this great episode of the Twilight Zone (Wordplay,<\/i> 1985) in which one man realizes that words he knew start changing meaning. It begins when his neighbor refers to the dog as an encyclopedia. And \u2013 the Twilight Zone being the Twilight Zone \u2013 this trend continues until our hero is hunched over his kid\u2019s ABC book relearning his words: Apple is now Shoe and Dog is now Wednesday.<\/p>\n

I envision the 1994 Time Traveler with the same sort of predicament. In any case, if you really want to freak out, just have some pizza and think about what it would be like if you traveled to 2034.<\/p>\n

People of 2014, what else? Fill out this list! <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can you imagine going back to the time of Shakespeare? Right now you\u2019re probably shivering with terror as you imagine dealing with the thous and thees and hithers, not to mention wearing tights and having a pointed beard. Have you ever thought about what it would be like for someone to visit 2014 from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-uK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1906"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2939,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906\/revisions\/2939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}