Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: Slang

English, as we all know, is a language which is constantly evolving. You
have only to look at the textbooks which were in use just 20 or 30 years
ago, to see how English has changed in many subtle ways.
Many of the shorcuts in grammar which used to be considered sloppy - or just
plain wrong - are now perfectly acceptable. Hundred of expressions which
were once thought to be too colloquial for correct use are now part and
parce of the working language.
New words for new concepts and new inventions have had to be coined.
Technology has produced a large number of lexical items which are in commun
use: most people are familiar with words like input, output, feedback,
hardware and software, even though they may know very little about
computers.
But the richest source of new vocabulary has always been "slang".
Slang tends to originate within smaller groups - the armed forces, jazz
musicians and their fans, people in show business, the underworld, drug
addicts, and college students, to name but a few.
Each sector generates its own special slang, some of wich may become, for a
brief period, part of everyone's vocabulary.
Occasionally , a word or expression is so vivid or so widely used that it
slips into the mainstream of the language, thus gaining a certain
respectability. In many cases, the line which separates "slang" from
"informal usage" is a matter of individual opinion.
Newsgroups(usenet) have produced a large number of lexical items.
Are there lexical items which are now in common use? (newsgroups
slang).........so widely used that it slips into the mainstream of  the
language, thus gaining a certain respectability???
Franco

. 
[1]
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=v9hk89y...@garrett.hpl.hp.com

language, thus gaining a certain respectability???
One example of this is the acronym "FAQ" (pronounced "fack" by most
people rather than one letter at a time).
-- 
John Hall
           "If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts;
            but if he will be content to begin with doubts,
            he shall end in certainties."       Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

not certain how much "respectability" any of these have acquired.
Do you use those words ? I mean do you use those words when you're talking
in a different context: family, school, club and so on?
Bye Ben
Franco

 acquired.
"Plonk" is not a Usenet neologism, but a word to which Usenet has added
a new meaning.  Plenty of people I know (in the UK) were using it in its
original meaning  ("put-down" either as a verb or a noun) long before
Usenet existed.  I still have to stop and translate it into its new
meaning whenever I come across it in a Usenet context.
-- 
Mike Stevens, narrowboat Felis Catus II
Web site 
www.mike-stevens.co.uk
No man is an island.  So is Man.


Please remove it.cultura.linguistica.inglese from future replies, as
that is an Italian newsgroup.
-- 
Enrico C

meaning whenever I come across it in a Usenet context.
I have read in some context that "plonk" was an undistinguished  brand
of wine.
S&

 wrote in message
news:qqvntvotrcqikgmhe...@4ax.com...

Not a brand. The story goes, that it is a shortened bastardisation of 'vin
blanc'.
m.

 meaning whenever I come across it in a Usenet context.
Don't forget the 'cheap wine' meaning. I thought Usenet people who wrote 
'plonk' where having a cheap whine.
-- 
Rob Bannister


Not so much a brand as a generic description.  It was the WW1 British
soldiers' idionatic form of "vin blanc".


. 
Wow!  Merkins have been around since before "The Great Renaming".
-- 
Brian {Hamilton Kelly}                                          
b...@dsl.co.uk
    "We can no longer stand apart from Europe if we would.  Yet we are
    untrained to mix with our neighbours, or even talk to them".
                                              George Macaulay Trevelyan, 1919