„Wenn man 1 gute Bank hat vong Vorsorge her“- The Media as Catalyst for Language Change
Teenage Slang that is used to target a younger audience is nothing new. It is a fairly easy way to increase popularity and simultaneously makes it possible for those trends to spread far beyond the borders of youth language. It leads to natural language change (which has always been a part of our society and way of communication, as diachronic research shows) and thus to progress.
But most slang expressions don’t follow grammatical or morphological rules and are, from a linguistic point of view, spelling mistakes. So is the integration of Teenage Slang into people’s day-to-day vernacular with the media as its catalyst a good thing? Or should we rather prevent this development?
Let’s take a look at two German examples that have been omnipresent on my feed for the past few months:
First of all, there’s the numeral 1. Apart from its original function, it is often used as a stand-in for the German masculine and neuter indefinite article ein. The first introduction of this usage was in collocation with life (“Was ist das für 1 life?”), which is a popular Anglicism that has found its way into the German language.
The second example is the word vong. To unfamiliar Germans, this looks very weird and very wrong- but it is supposed to mean von or vom, which could be translated with the English prepositions about, of or from.
There is no doubt that these two are grammatically incorrect, but 1 is less of a spelling mistake than vong is. It is closer to the correct form ein, since it is pronounced “eins”. The linguistic trend of this form is somewhat understandable, with it being quicker and easier to write. Therefore, it could become an acceptable variation, even if linguists are probably not very fond of it. Vong however is a severe spelling mistake. It is not nearly as close to the grammatical alternative von/vom and since it includes additional consonants, there is no simplification. So what’s the point then?
Both forms have been used and posted by the German Sparkasse and by the JuLis Berlin last year. These are only two examples, there are of course more all over the internet.
In the case of Sparkasse the slang variants were used to target younger clients, while JuLis choose them to gain more voters. It makes sense for the Junge Liberale to use youth language, since their target group mainly consists of teenagers and younger adults. But the question is, whether this increases their popularity or rather ridicules their authenticity. After all, not all young adults use these words and some might even find them absurd or dissuasive.
The fact that Sparkasse used the vernacular to their advantage is not surprising. They are known for their big advertising campaigns with unusual or popular strategies (Giro sucht Hero, Joko&Klaas).
What remains is that the media is the best instrument to attract younger people’s attention and using a language most of them understand and favour is certainly profitable. This has the result, that such linguistic changes (ein to 1, von/vom to vong) make their way into the vernacular of not only teenagers, but also adults. Even if they do not use it themselves, because of this, they are able to recognise and understand it. In turn, integrity and a shared identity are encouraged and strengthened, which means: We should be more open towards these shifts in our communication, we are not forced to use them after all.
