1129: Meme Dialects Jan 11, 2018

People interested in language are probably familiar with terms like 'Standard American English', 'Standard (British) English', 'Australian English' etc., but while those dialects all came to diverge slightly because of geographical distance of people over time, other environments can lead to the creation of dialects as well. Some dialects are associated with ethnicity, of course, but also the Internet has led to what could be called 'meme dialects'. While most memes still use standard English, others—famously lolcat- and dog-memes—use what began as nonstandard English, which you can see below, but eventually developed to have fairly standard syntax. What separates this dialect from others mentioned before is not only does it not necessarily belong to a well-defined group, but also it has no phonology, because it is written down.

You can now support Word Facts on Patreon for new things and to help make the content better: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts.