New Media and the Language

One of the unavoidable parts of our lives now-a-days, apart from the mobile phones, is the Internet. We eat it, we dream it, and we sleep it. There are many disputes regarding the need and effect of the Internet among us, and especially the young children. Newspapers, journals and TV news repeatedly give accounts of the tragic conditions of the Internet addicted children. In spite of all we cannot deny the overwhelming influence of Internet on us, and especially on our languages. Today, thanks to the various chatting sites, we speak a hybrid language. In this paper, the author discusses the influence of internet over language and the position of English, the ‘global’ language of this and past few decades, in comparison with other Asian languages (preferably Chinese, Spanish, Hindi etc.), in the world of ‘netizens’ (citizens/users of the Internet). The researcher also discovers how the ‘third world’ languages have the highest user ratings in the Internet.