Number of Posts: 4
Posts 1 - 4
France Plans a New Keyboard to Shift Control to Typists
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 22.1.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | language threat, spelling, word/writing
Summary | The French language is notoriously difficult to write and computer keyboards are not very well suited to facilitate typing for French typists. Important letters and diacritics are oftentimes hidden behind complicated shortcut combinations and discourage people from writing correctly in French. Since keyboards arrived, the false rumor that diacritics can be omitted on capital letters has spread around. Now the French governement is looking into designing a better keyboard standard for French typists.
Image Description | N/A
Can a GIF Work Better Than Words?
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 21.9.2015
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, GIFs, language threat, word/writing
Summary | An interviewee claims that using GIFs allows her to express complex feelings and emotions in a a couple seconds. GIFs are becoming more and more popular (i.e. on Facebook, Tumblr, etc.). Words and emojis are becoming old-fashioned.
Image Description | GIF representing three men looking at their smartphone.
Image Tags | gifs, male(s), smartphone
Emojis: The death of the written language?
Newspaper | CNBC
Date | 24.6.2015
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, misunderstanding, word/writing
Summary | People are using more and more emojis, which can be seen as a threat to written language. Indeed, people are starting to replace words with emojis in order to communicate a feeling or emotion, and according to the author of the article, this is worrying. Moreover, using emojis can lead to misunderstandings and miscommunication. Finally, if school start to incorporate emojis in their curriculum, it can be perceived as a regress back to hierogylphics.
Image Description | Getty image of a keyboard composed of emojis, and image of a series of Apple emojis representing diversity.
Image Tags | emojis, keyboard
How I Became Addicted to Online Word Games
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 18.3.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | addiction, game, language threat, spelling, word/writing
Summary | There are plenty of stories about the horrors of online game addiction. But being addicted to online word games mimicking Boggle or Scrabble does not only have the same addiction-related issues but also messes with your vocabulary. These games have no penalty for guessing a word that might not even be one, which is why one just begins to memorize all words that the app accepts without really knowing what they mean. This obsessive toying with words may have a negative impact on our linguistics abilities as well as spelling, and so on.
Image Description | Illustration of a man with Scrabble tiles on his tongue reminiscent of party pills.
Image Tags | game, male(s)
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