Language Evolves, or rather, Constantly Cooks New Ways to Pass the Vibe Check

One of my favorite Friday posts we’ve done at The Scholarly Kitchen featured a video of kids looking at the original iPod, in which every single one of them referred to it as a “phone” despite it not having any functionality toward making calls. Language evolves, and now “phone” essentially means any sort of small computer one carries around on one’s person. But that was (gulp) ten years ago. Those kids are all now in college or the workforce and have been replaced by a new generation with an entirely different set of linguistics.

Luckily, we have our intrepid and aged academics, willing to spend the time to study the behaviors of bizarre cultures, such as those of geo-alpha. Here, Ariel Smith offers two addresses, the first to an auditorium full of high school students, and the second to a graduating class of language students at the Ohio State University. Both talks are delivered (with the generous help of subtitles for us old folks) in the native tongue of today’s teenagers.

Enjoy, and be sure to Fanum tax that knowledge.

David Crotty

@davidacrotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.