It’s time to deconstruct language variation barriers
We seem to have never talked so much about colloquial and grammatical changes as in recent years: lexicons, gender definition in romance languages, internet abbreviation, office slang and language localization
Some months ago I came across an article about how some Portuguese parents were concerned about their children incorporating “Brazilian” words into their vocabulary due to exposure to internet content (mostly Youtube channels), and so were seeking advice from child psychologists to learn how to deal with this phenomenon.
It didn’t take long for my social feed to be full of friends commenting on the article and memes everywhere. What most caught my attention in the story was the fact that my native language, Portuguese, the seventh most spoken language in the world, was simply called “Brazilian”, while it’s in fact a variant of Portuguese spoken in Brazil.
A similar situation has been experienced by American parents, who claim their toddlers started speaking in full British accents after watching the cartoon Peppa Pig. I can’t get enough of watching these adorable ones repeating catchphrases from the famous British show — Oh, dear!
Personally, I can’t see any problem with that, as we’re so used to using English words in our day to day lives while speaking in our mother tongues, what’s the point of worrying when expressions in the same language, in linguistic variations, come into use?
What exactly is a language variation?
A linguistic variation can be defined as a particular choice of a language’s phonemes, morphemes, structures and words that are related to a specific region (e.g. British English vs. American English), style (e.g. official vs. casual) or register (formal vs. colloquial).
Ana Diaz, Natural Language Analyst @ Unbabel
We seem to have never talked so much about colloquial and grammatical changes as in recent years: lexicons, gender definition in romance languages, internet abbreviation, office slang and language localization in translation. Although there is still reluctance on the part of some, we’re in the midst of a lexical revolution and we can’t close our eyes to the ongoing transformation, especially to the influence between different linguistic varieties.
When I asked Ana Diaz, our in-house Natural Language Analyst, whether the internet can be considered an ally or a threat, she told me that “(…) language can be seen as a living organism and, as such, it changes throughout its life. In this sense, we can’t avoid change and can’t consider it as positive or negative, but only as natural and necessary”.
If the internet has the power to distribute information and knowledge on a global scale, why should we keep linguistic nuances under geographical boundaries?
Have you noticed language changing as a result of the internet? Comment below and let us know your stories.
