Tag Archives: language

Twitter Twitter Twirl

I’m having a go. I’m still signing up for everything I don’t know about. That is, I know it exists; I just don’t know how it works. Today I decided that I’d been signed up to Twitter long enough without doing anything about it. It was time to try a tweet (I think). Since twittering revolves around people, I thought I’d get me some (sic). I had a couple of people – literally – in my Twitterverse; I needed more. Many, many more. Like all the other Twitterers. It felt strange – browsing through people’s bios on other Twitterers’ sites. A bit like stealing friends. I followed anyone I’d ever heard of and those with whom I shared interests in education. Funny thing is that a few people were following Barack Obama, so I thought I’d give him a go too. Meanwhile, I need to practise what to say. Seems there’s a twitter language and grammar. Terse, obviously. And an intimacy that is expressed through digs and smart comments, I noticed. But how do I begin to use this tone with people I don’t even know? And just my luck, as soon as I master the twittering, the rest will all fly off and join a new social network with its own foreign language and customs.

I blog, you blog …

What’s the linguistic deal with new words, such as ‘blog’, ‘wiki’, ‘twitter’?
Do they get conjugated? I blog, you blog, he/she/it blogs, we blog, you (formal/plural) blog, they blog
Future tense: I will twitter
Subjunctive: If I were wikid, I’d ….
Conditional tense: If I twitter hard, I will …
Imperative: Twitter more!
Are they declined? Do they have a gender?
Can we use them as a past participle? I have blogged; she has twittered
as a negative? unblogged; misblog
as an adjective? blogging; twittery
as an adverb? wikilly; twittly
profanity? blognation!
derivatives? blogophobe; wikimania; twitteration
And are they translated into other languages or just ‘borrowed’?

Please add your own Web 2.0 grammar suggestions and we may end up with a dictionary.