In what ways does your internet dialect differ from your IRL dialect?
It just occurred to me that my internet dialect in my IRL dialect are slightly different in a few ways. Curious to hear others dialectal differences and thoughts on the subject.
I live in an extremely conservative area, so almost entirely. I’m happy to be loud and proud about my leftism on the Internet, but not around these psychopath Trumpers.
In posts and in speech I tend to ramble. I know I type like I speak because it’s sounded out in my mental voice and I often put the wrong homophones without realizing (too, to, two, weather, whether, there, their). I try to edit it if I catch myself.
When I’m commenting on a post I tend to use very high-register vocabulary, to the point of sounding archaic or academic. I think it’s primarily a hold-over from writing essays in school, but it doesn’t hurt that the places on the Internet where I hang out tend to be extremely nerdy.
I also frequently leave my sentences unfinished when talking IRL. I’ll just sort of trail off once I can see that I’ve gotten my point across instead of bothering with a complete sentence.
I swear so much more irl than online, like a ton. I use lol online and some time saving abbreviations (like I won’t say irl irl, I’ll sound out the full words). Otherwise I pretty much talk the same
Much the same actually. For one thing, I decided back in 2000 or so that I wouldn’t say anything to a person online that I wouldn’t say to their face. I’m sure I’ve slipped a lot on that. :(
Also, I try to type like I talk. Know what I mean y’all?
I’ve noticed some older people, like my mom, use acronyms or messaging abbreviations way more than my adult age group. I haven’t seen my friends use them since high school/college.
Here’s the way I remember history, starting in 2000 when I was 13:
SMS became popular with us damned kids first. Back in the day each text cost a dime, had a hard limit of 160 characters, and took an age to type on a typical phone 10-key pad. So 1. we had to invent a system to convey body language and non-verbal reactions in text, and 2. we had to abbreviate everything. This triggered the adults’ juvenoia something fierce, then the pop culture industry noticed kids doing something en masse and then every product name was SMS abbreviated, up to and including song names. I think they mistook it for slang? l33t came and went at some point in here as well.
By this time it’s 2004, Strong Bad is bitching about grammar in sbemails, a lot of the cooler places online are requiring literacy tests to participate, and the adults start going online too, and since many of them didn’t learn to type when they were in school in the 60’s, they suddenly understand the desire to push as few buttons as possible, and somehow convince themselves they’re being cool for doing it.
Hence, you’ve got folks in their 20’s and 30’s now who type in a sort of casual longhand, like so.
and people 🧑🤝🧑 in they’re 50s and 60s 👴 who type ⌨️ liek this bcuz 🌵 they can 🥫
I mostly communicate in English online. Even when I don’t use English, my online communication still tend to use more English loanwords. It is also a bit formal and diplomatic, without much use of online abbreviations and other shortcuts.
IRL, it’s my native tongue, with a smattering of English words and phrases. It tends to be more informal and direct as well. However, I don’t think I use a lot of colloquialisms, slang and the like, even if my IRL speech gets really informal.
btw i speak Estonian, English and a tiny bit of Spanish
example sentence:
mitte viiega palun
without five please
sin cinco por favor
im learning Spanish next on the line is German then cornish then toki pona then Basque Iceland pidgin and then whatever language other than English they speak in niue and the rest is not decided
I’m a lot more polite, and I generally don’t swear on the internet. Irl I’m not family friendly at all. If I were in a TV show my only lines would be “bleeeeep bleep bleeeep bleep”
Hah! Same with the IRL potty-mouth. People who I got to meet in person after having known me online expected someone really self-effacing and soft-spoken. Of course they were shocked at how salty my mouth can be.
I do keep my f-bombs precise though, for maximum impact.
In real life, I'm not so great at coherent conversational speech. I come across intense and weird and as I can't information process in real time and I talk quickly and without eye contact, it's not so great for being heard/listened to, or talking with people. (Guess who has autism?)
Online I can edit my words. When I have enough space to think about what I want to say and to try to navigate how it will be percieved, my communication style is far more legible- and sometimes even comes across as smart and/or funny.
(Edited for grammar as I reread it just now and noticed how bad it was.)
Pretty much the same outside of the fact its like I was walking past while you were talking about something and then stop and give you my opinion and then leave but then we see each other later and you tell me what you think. its way disjointed and we glom onto different aspects of the conversation in deciding what its about.
If I write in english its pretty much the same. My German is completely different. I talk in a pretty heavy Austrian dialect irl but I write like a german person would
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