Saving the future of English as #WeAreEvolving

Ever seen some English words used in scenarios which made you go “huh?”. Me too, several times. As an old student of Presec (Presby Boys’ SHS, Legon) where we used student lexicons, I became really acquainted to English words being used to mean many different things which weren’t in the official dictionaries. Thanks to pidgin English, this notion became popular. In fact, we loved using English words to mean different things so others wouldn’t understand what we were saying. It was and is still cool. The English language has been evolving. We have been evolving. #WeAreEvolving. You bet I was going to have fun with such a hashtag right? Here. And many others too.

Here are some of the coolest and best #WeAreEvolving posts from January. Quite creative too. You are welcome to join in as well.

I felt it was quite odd to see what crush meant when I first encountered this word at the turn of the millenium. A small sound of a bird has evolved into a loud statement from humans on Twitter. My buddy +Frank Bruce of the +Barcamp Bolga team threw more light on Tweet with this Tweet too.

The word cassette hasn’t changed, but +Antumwini Amos outlined how listening to music has evolved with this tweet. Mbamuah got in on the act with the evolution of DP, and I loved the statements around the use of the letters cum words in LOL and XOXO. Even punctuations have gotten in on the act! ;)

Surf the waters, and surf the net, ahem the web, now. This image in this tweet answered the age old question of why the thing for navigating our PCs is called mouse. As technology has become more ubiquitous, it’s needed to borrow many words. Now, apple, blackberry, (courtesy +Enoch Robot Boy Appiah Junior) amongst many other things, have really evolved into other things. I mean, how at how tablet has been re-introduced as a word to kids! Don’t you just check check this? :-)

Shuffle cards then, I haven’t played ‘Spa’ in ages though I play ‘Sipa’, the Togolese version via an app I blogged about here. Like +Nii Ayaa Mensah pointed out, the most common thing we shuffle these days are tunes (music). Talking about music, you see how rappers call out lyrics as sick lines or even speak of being ‘ill’ as a great thing? Same with seeing footballers score ‘sick’ goals! Prince reminded us.

Canon is now a popular camera brand but it is still used to shoot! Zoom has evolved and become important in shooting too! Sister +Deborah Vanessa reminded us of another thing in cameras, memory!

The word blast means multiple things as pointed out here. for good and for bad, as people pointed out. And even sound! Many of these word evolutions came about from high school lexicon, as +Mutombo da Poet tweeted about ‘mining’.

William spoke of shark, something I was while at Presec :-) Sometimes. how you say it means everything. So much that these days, I call my better half boo! I must end by saying it was really cool to see this hashtag (which has also evolved from something), trend locally in Ghana on January 24! Go and get creative and point out how #WeAreEvolving via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Don’t be left out.