Language is changing. With the internet came a new brand of half-English with staying power. Half-English that, as I discovered last week, has started to make its way out into the everyday world.
I met the future of speech in the 800 section of my local library, “Poetry, Plays, and Humor.” I was reading the cover of a likely candidate, when a hip, cyber-teen caught the title and exclaimed, “I’ve read that! Get it, seriously, it made me LOL.” (He pronounced this as “lawl”) I was thrilled to hear such a great review, thanked him, and that book was added to my pile.
I was about halfway home when I caught myself thinking, “What the HECK just happened?” Had I seriously just picked up a book because a teenaged hipster told me I would “lawl”? Couldn’t he have just told me that it was funny? When did LOL become a promise of good family fun, and WHY had it seemed so normal to me?
I read the book anyway, and it DID make me laugh. Out Loud. It got me thinking ... I’m living in the age of tech, am I not? The “far out” and “groovy” slang of my parents has become obsolete, and has made way for the hyper-abbreviated slang of today. It’s not grammatically correct, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it’s the strange, new voice of my generation. I can learn to run with it, can’t I?
Today, as I was leaving, I spotted the book on my bedside table. I considered it for a moment, then threw it to my sister with a smile and a promise: “Hey, read this. You’ll LOL.”
