Text II
Learn English online: How the internet is changing language
Online, English is now a common language for users from around the world. In the process, the language itself is changing. Noah Webster thought that a common language brings people together and helps create a new identity.
Webster’s dictionary, now is in its edition, adopted the Americanized orthography familiar today (02) “-er” in place of “-re” in theatre, not using the “u” from colour, losing one “l” in traveller, and listed new words for example, skunk and squash.
The Internet is creating a similar language evolution, but at a much faster velocity. Some linguists anticipate that in 10 years English will dominate the Internet, but in very different forms. That’s because people who speak English as a second language are more in number than native speakers. And they use it to communicate with other non-native speakers (05), particularly on the Internet where people don’t pay so much attention to grammar and orthography and users don’t have to preoccupy about their way of speaking.
Users of Facebook, for example, in a number of different “Englishes" (01) including Indian English, or Hinglish, Spanglish (Spanish English) and Konglish (Korean English). For a long time, these variations existed in individual cultures, but now they are expanding and becoming popular online (06). “On the Internet all that is important is that people can communicate - nobody has a right to tell them what the language has to be,” says Baron.
The intensification of the use of the Internet in everyday life means that language online is not a zero result game. On the contrary, it permits multiple languages to show up and they are mixing into English (04) that is becoming the world’s lingua franca (03).
(Adapted from http://www.bbc.cokh/news/magazine-20332763 Acessado em 25/03/2013)
Glossary:
To lose: perder, retirar
Língua franca: idioma usado globalmente para a comunicação
“Webster’s dictionary is now in its edition.” The full form of the underlined item is