When my children were young, one of their favorite books was Frindle – the story about a teacher telling her class that words enter our language when enough people start using it. (If you haven’t read it, do so – and find out what a frindle is!) A few weeks ago, a colleague sent me a news article noting that the children’s word of the year, according to Oxford University press is….(drum roll please)… #hastag! This is based on 120,000 entries for the BBC Radio 2 competition.
Social media are giving new meanings to words. While the use of words like Facebook, email and TV are declining, social media words on the rise are YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat among youngsters. Moreover, they are assigning new meanings to word like hits shares, notifications, comments, likes and views – all of which are part of social media.
As Vineeta Gupta, head of children’s dictionaries at Oxford University Press says, “language is constantly changing and adapting. Children are true innovators and are using the language of social media to produce incredibly creative writing.†Wonder what words they will start adopting or creating in 2016…