Number of Posts: 12
Posts 1 - 10
Das Vong zum Sonntag
(The vong for Sunday)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 27.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | anglicisms, language threat, social media, texting
Summary | The German internet and social media have produced a new language in the last two years: the "vong" language, its main feature being an attributive construction of "vong (noun) her" which roughly translates to and the English phrase (noun)-wise with "vong" replacing the "-wise". It is a language between English and German, uses numericals wherever possible as is known from texting language and is highly influenced by hip hop jargon. Now a German artist has translated the Bible into vong-language.
Image Description | N/A
Facebook musste AI abschalten, die "Geheimsprache" entwickelt hat
(Facebook had to turn of AIs who developed their own "secret language")
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 28.6.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, language threat
Summary | Facebook had to deactivate two artificial intelligence chatbots called Bob and Alice. They had begun communicating with one another in a knockoff language similar to English with sentences like: "I can can I I everything else." Because this communication is unintellegible for the developers, Bob and Alice were taken down for security reasons.
Image Description | Getty images of Mark Zuckerberg and cyborgs as well as a Tweet by Elon Musk.
Image Tags | male(s), Twitter
Vong diesem Mann her kommt 1 neue Sprache
(Fromg this man comes 1 new language)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 16.6.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | language threat, meme, social media, spelling
Summary | A meme is floating around in social media spaces. The "Vong" language is parodying serious language by incorporation orthographical and grammatical mistakes as well as tautology. It has become incredibly popular on social media and has even appeared in Germans' spoken language and advertisements. Common features of it are replacing the indefinite articles "eine/ein" ("a") with a "1" and adding the phrase "vong... her" usually including a redundant tautalogical statement and the misspelled preposition "von". An example would be: "The weather is really nice, sun-wise." Here, the "sun-wise" is the tautological statement and it would also include an orthographical error in "Vong" language.
Image Description | N/A
Hinter dem Hashtag #BlauerWal steckt eine verstörende Geschichte
(A disturbing story hides behind the hashtag #BlueWhale)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 18.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | (mental) health, hashtags, law, social media, threat, youth
Summary | Currently, a man is on trial in Russian courts for supposedly urging 15 teenagers to commit suicide. The case is connected to the #BlueWhale challenge that is said to circulate online on social media. It is a lethal game where one person gives another increasingly self-destructive tasks. Apparently, psychologically fragile teenagers are targeted online.
Image Description | Getty image of a blue whale and images of a man being arrested and in trial with his face pixellated.
Image Tags | male(s)
Dieser Chatbot reserviert den Tisch fürs Abendessen
(This chatbot makes dinner reservations)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 27.7.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, language threat, youth
Summary | Facebook messenger now has the chatbot Botmio on offer which lets users make dinner reservations at restaurants. This is perfect for younger generations who are reluctant to pick up the phone to call a human to make a reservation - digital natives are "language lazy". They would rather just make a reservation online without interacting with another human.
Image Description | A hand holding a smartphone using a Facebook chatbot and a portrait of the Botmio inventer.
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), male(s), smartphone
Smartphones können Spracherwerb bei Kindern behindern
(Smartphones can hinder the language learning of children)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 15.6.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | childhood, language threat, smartphone
Summary | Children learn language by being interacted with and spoken with. Smartphones can get in the way of that, say when a parent waits for the bus with their child. Before smartphones, the parent would comment on the surroundings and interact with the child. Now, the parent might check their messages and pass up a valuable learning opportunity for their child.
Image Description | A hand holding a smartphone.
Image Tags | hand(s), smartphone
Die Frau, die ungewollt mit Emojis ein Haus mietete
(The woman who inadvertently rented a house with emojis)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 24.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, law, misunderstanding
Summary | The debate around whether emojis count as words or seriously meaningful content is very heated - not only in academics but also in law. The Oxford English dictionary only reheated that fire by choosing an emoji as word of the year. Multiple law cases have centered on misunderstandings around emoji use, most recently a case where a woman indicated interest in renting a house with emojis (flamenco dancer, dancer girls, squirrel, comet, a victory sign, and a bottle of Champagne). The house owner sued her for using misleading emojis after she decided not to rent the house after all.
Image Description | An image of a woman's hand holding a smartphone and picking out an emoji and a portrait of the Israely judge who worked on the emoji case.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s), hand(s), male(s), smartphone
Punkt: Am Ende
(Period: the end)
Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 31.3.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | diversity, emojis, language threat, punctuation, research/study, texting
Summary | The neutral punctuation mark "." is disappearing from our written language. The most likely reason is that with text messages we no longer need a period to tell us when a sentence is finished. Linguists are not worried about the extinction of the period. Language is ever-changing, they say. It is quite sad though, that the period is being omitted more and more and hardly anyone cares. All debates now center around emojis: can Apple just replace the gun emoji with a water pistol one? Is it racist to use a black emoji as a White person?
Image Description | The sunset over the ocean.
Instagram Für Alle
(Instagram for everyone)
Newspaper | Lead Digital
Date | 18.1.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | hashtags, Instagram, marketing, social media
Summary | Instagram has become the second most active social media platform after Facebook so it is a great place for companies to advertize their product - or rather their brand. Instagram is all about visual storytelling so it is a prime platform to develop one's brand by presenting a certain look or attitude. Instagram offers various visual formats - from image posts over stories like on Snapchat to videos and livestreams. It is important to be thorough when choosing hashtags as these determine who will find the post. Many hashtags are ambiguous so one really has to be in the know to skillfully ascribe hashtags.
Image Description | N/A
Kommunikation ist alles
(Communication is everything)
Newspaper | Frankfurter Neue Presse
Date | 4.2.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | abbreviations, childhood, language threat, smartphone
Summary | Many young children already have smartphones. It is problematic if youths spend too much time on new media - they don't learn how to interact face-to-face so that they whip out the phone even if they are hanging out with a friend. They increasingly write in abbreviations which makes them do badly in school. Parents are part of the problem, because they demand that their children be available on the smartphone at all times. It is important to give children positive offline experiences.
Image Description | Image of a man holding a cell phone and holding his thumb up.
Image Tags | cell phone, hand(s), male(s)
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