{"id":7016,"date":"2015-10-18T20:58:41","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T03:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=7016"},"modified":"2015-10-18T20:58:41","modified_gmt":"2015-10-19T03:58:41","slug":"other-matters-language-in-the-digital-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2015\/10\/other-matters-language-in-the-digital-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Other Matters: Language In The Digital Age"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/email-logo.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/email-logo.jpg\" alt=\"email logo\" width=\"248\" height=\"203\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7017\" \/><\/a>The nearly infinite flexibility of English makes the language universally useful and often confusing. Seeing the word for the first time, who would know how to pronounce \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Arkansas?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Imagine that you had never heard \u00e2\u20ac\u0153colonel,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sword\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wednesday.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d How would you say them? The peculiarities of English were challenging enough before computers. The digital revolution often explodes conventional usage.<\/p>\n<p>In the pre-digital age, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153nesting\u00e2\u20ac\u009d might have had to do with birds or with human cohabitation, not HTML technique. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hypertext\u00e2\u20ac\u009d might have described a book by a writer high on amphetamines. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153OOP\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was a comic strip caveman; now, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s object-oriented programming. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Schema,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the old Greek word adapted to English, used to refer to a plan or scheme. Now, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an XML document. <\/p>\n<p>No piece of digital jargon is more common or less logical than \u00e2\u20ac\u0153email.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d When most written correspondence was through the post office, we sent a letter, not a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mail.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Yet, in the language of digital communication, we send \u00e2\u20ac\u0153an email.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We email each other, making the noun a verb. Logically, it should be an email message or, simply, a message. But, what does logic have to do with how language changes? Maybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s best just to sit back and be amazed, or amused, at the way it evolves.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The nearly infinite flexibility of English makes the language universally useful and often confusing. Seeing the word for the first time, who would know how to pronounce \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Arkansas?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Imagine that you had never heard \u00e2\u20ac\u0153colonel,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sword\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wednesday.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d How would you say them? The peculiarities of English were challenging enough before computers. The digital revolution [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7016","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}