[Ads-l] Internet Language Quiz

[Ben Zimmer]

On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 10:53 AM, Geoff Nathan wrote:
>
> A geeky colleague sent me this. I got 8/12, but I think some of them
> are Britspeak, so I've got an excuse.
>
> > http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/22/upshot/internet-language-quiz.html?abt=0002&abg=0&_r=0

I don't believe any of these terms are primarily Britspeak. They're
all taken from Jack Grieve's "Mapping Lexical Spread in American
English," which he presented at the ADS meeting in Portland.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/99161057/ADS2015.pdf

When Jack made his ADS presentation, I was most surprised by
"unbothered," which I at first assumed was related to UK usage of
"bothered"/"bovvered" (as in Catherine Tate's Lauren Cooper character
of the mid-aughts, whose catchphrase was "Am I bovvered?"). But the
data shows that "unbothered" -- like many other items on Jack's list
-- first took off on Twitter among young African American women,
particularly in the South.

Jack also discussed these items in a talk he gave earlier this week,
"Tracking the Emergence of New Words Across Time and Space":

http://ihrdighist.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2015/01/08/tuesday-24-february-tracking-the-emergence-of-new-words-across-time-and-space/
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/99161057/GRIEVE_IHR.pdf

--bgz

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