Informal Language
aaaaaaaaagh the show tonight shall rock some serious jam You can tell a rich woman btw she walk Jeff says “lyk omgod omgod omgodzzzzzZZZzzzzz!!!11one” heheh okieee! must finish it now ill ttyl lol. . as u can tell im very bitter right now.
Adapted From Because Internet McCulloch, Gretchen
Interesting things:
- The weird use of btw, see here
- “The most obvious thing in these sentences, from the perspective of formal written English, is the informal parts: expressive lengthening like “aaaaaaaaagh,” expressive punctuation like “!!!11one,” and abbreviations like “ttyl” and “lol.” But Tagliamonte and Denis point out that these sentences are also odd from the perspective of informal spoken English: if you record teens sitting around talking to each other out loud, at any point in the early twenty-first century, they barely ever speak words like “shall,” “says,” “must,” or “very”—they prefer the newer versions “going to,” “is like,” “have to,” and “so.” (Picture the difference between saying, “And then he said, ‘Shall you go?’ And I said, ‘I must, I’m very tired,’” versus “And then he’s like, ‘Are you gonna go?’ And I’m like, ‘I have to, I’m so tired.’” The first belongs in writing, or in the speech of a previous generation, but the second is very much of our own.)”