#and my generation (gen z) LOVES making themselves sound smarter and more important than they are

[awkwardturtletrash]

Im not an expert at all but Im opinionated. I did a research paper on the Gullah dialect of Creole languages for a syntax class. It is very much a ‘vibes’ based language due to their abstract use of such limited vocabulary. Some words have dozens and dozens of different meanings, tenses don’t matter, verbs and nouns are meaningless, and tone carries most of it.

It can still be researched, recorded, and has a historical path. It is a rigid, definable language to native speakers . It’s very much something that has to be told to understand, it’s very much against other language’s natural code of conduct. But it exists historically, proven despite its rejection of syntactic law.

Emojis and “chat” are neither of these things. They aren’t natural progressions of grammar, they’re humorous references. They’re jokes. Grammar isn’t just references that mean other things, it’s a system of communication through shared representation of concepts. It IS rigid because it fucking had to be. Otherwise there would be no point.

Gullah is extremely socially based and doesn’t make sense to those unfamiliar with what they’re taking about, it can come across as “vibes.” This is because it is shaped by colonialism, slavery, had time to develop, and location.

Memes and a quote from twitch are nothing grammatical. They’re not new forms of language. I understand you want your wasted time to be more important or mean something but maybe be more interesting than calling images pertaining to Seinfeld equal to ancient texts. Just a thought!

"chat is a pronoun" has officially joined my list of internet linguistics pet peeves. "emojis are hieroglyphs" is welcoming them to the club.