[Ads-l] Internet Language Quiz

Geoff Nathan geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU
Fri Feb 27 16:34:03 UTC 2015


I guess I didn't know them because I'm not hip enough. 

My younger IT colleagues certainly roll their eyes frequently. 

Geoffrey S. Nathan 
Faculty Liaison, C&IT 
and Professor, Linguistics Program 
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/ 
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT) 

Nobody at Wayne State will EVER ask you for your password. Never send it to anyone in an email, no matter how authentic the email looks. 

----- Original Message -----

> From: "Ben Zimmer" <bgzimmer at gmail.com>
> To: "Geoff Nathan" <geoffnathan at wayne.edu>
> Sent: Friday, February 27, 2015 11:21:14 AM
> Subject: Re: Internet Language Quiz

> 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

> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/

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