Technology inspires lingo

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With words like cyberbullying, retweeting, woot and sexting getting space in the Oxford English Dictionary, the word play on web has definitely got more interesting. Earlier, the inclusion of abbreviated words OMG (Oh My God), LOL (Laugh Out Loud) and FYI (For Your Information) in the dictionary shocked language experts, but now it is official that the newage vocabulary of technology-inspired words is here to stay.
Prof Rosy Sinha, who teaches in the English department of Maharaja Agrasen College, says, “Technology is everywhere and it’s connecting people, so there’s a massive usage of technology-inspired words in our day to day life. I think it’s a nice move to include them in our dictionary to keep up with the modern language. In my class students use the short forms and modern English words for emailing and texting, but I feel there are no clear grammatical rules for this kind of vocabulary. I think these words are still not too appropriate in a formal context, hence I advise most of my students to stick to the prescribed language.”
Govind Sharma, a DU student, believes that by including more and more technology-based words the Oxford dictionary has given space to a language that’s slowly taking over accepted norms. He says, “Most of the newly included words are verbs so they reflect actions. More importantly, they are the Web’s verbs so they have to be a part of our diction. We now have a whole new list of actions, all thanks to the Web.”
Manjiri Indurkar, a media professional, opines, “Technology is a major part of our lives, so even the Oxford dictionary is adapting new terms which we use commonly. Terms like cyberbullying, retweeting etc, are used so commonly in newspapers and magazines that now we have added them to our daily vocabulary.”