ENGE reaction paper #1

Student name: Leung Lok Wai SID: 1155092495

Essay Question number: 4
Is the English language evolving or dying in the age of the global internet? Discuss
with reference to both public and academic views.

From the point of view from public, the English Language is evolving in the age

of global internet. English has become the international language in the world, people

can communicate by English and hence the global internet users have created lots of

new vocabularies, short forms like “Laugh Out Loud”, or even “Emojis”, those little

cute pictures which express our emotions. According to the Oxford dictionaries, the

“Word of the Year 2015” is the “Face with tears and joy” emoji, which is the first

time an emoji has been recognized as the “Word of the Year” by a renowned

dictionary. This shows us that English is not just being constricted in the old

framework of elegant words and grammars. Through this example, we can see the

influence of global internet to English language, which creates another new form of

English compare to the old ones.

Moreover, the development of internet English do enhance our skills of

communication. Due to the presence of short forms and Emojis, we can summarize

our ideas in shorter form and communicate with others in a faster speed. For example,

“Bae” stands for “baby” or “Before Anyone Else”, “ICYMI” stands for “In Case You
Miss It” etc. For Emojis, we can use the ones which suit our emotions correctly, like

“smiley face”, “sad face”, “angry face” etc. This kind of development enhanced the

communication speed in our daily life and is a kind of evolution of English language

based on the needs of global internet users: able to present ideas in the fastest and

most precise way.

However, it can also see as the dying of English Language in terms of academic

views. Although global internet has brought us a new form of English, the presence of

internet language itself has become a burden for English learners. Since it is the age of

speed and efficiency, the global internet languages such as short forms and Emojis are

developed to be a communication tool for presenting ideas in the shortest period of

time. Therefore, only the core of the idea has been included but other components

such as grammars and sentence structure are not involved. For example, when we

express ideas on internet, we would rather use short forms like “LOL”, “OMG”,

Emojis etc, even if we are using longer sentences, it will still be incomplete and full

with short forms compare to complete formal sentences, like” How’s goin?” compare

to” How is it going?” This can cause the decreasing use of formal English and lead to

the dying of formal writing skills as students nowadays fail to separate the use of

formal and internet English.