Thursday, October 27, 2011

The spread of language and modern culture

The only way linguists could learn about past cultures in Africa was to study their language and make guesses about their life styles based on vocabulary.   For instance, they could learn about the types of food they ate, religion, and government by examining how many words there were for specific items or ideas.  Based on that, what will future linguists say about present American culture if they study words that have spread across the Internet and into the mainstream?

Based on the things that have happened in this decade like tweeting, facebook, friending on facebook,  tumblr, iphones, ipods, ipads and etc.  These are somethings, in present time that are huge things that people do everyday.   A few years ago no one knew what these things were and what they were going to do.  But in 500 years later the linguists will be able to look at this decade and with no idea what looking at.  Like when linguists now look at things years ago, they look at the vocabulary, now with the Internet its always there, and always will be. Once you put something on the Internet there is no going back, its there forever.  But centuries ago, didn't have things that perserve, they would put then in clay pots and other things that would save there society.  Its alot harder to understand the society's back then.  But when linguists look to our prestent time all they have to do is look on the Internet.   It's so much more access able than it was many years ago.

Dictionary.com, its on the Internet forever, anybody hundreds of years later will be able to look at what was able to access during present time.  And have a lot more thoughts of what our society was like, they wouldn't need to make a hypotenuse.  There are many other sites that kept all of the things that people right like tweeting and facebook are the to major ones.

With the easy access to what ever you want on the Internet, it would be much easier to understand what happened in our society present time right now.  With just a click of a few buttons you get thousands of results, when linguists now are looking there wasn't  a Internet, so we don't really know what the society was like.  It wouldn't take to long to look for, like when linguists had to look for things in the old days.  Also it is a lot easier to kept and preserve all of the data during present time.  Thought they had to write them on pots to save their society, some of those society's were probably lost.   But now its a  ton easier to hold on to what happened during societies now.

No comments:

Post a Comment