Invite colleagues
This is yet another night in front of the computer, being introspective and trying to look forward at where us marketing professionals will be in a few years. I tend to start this 'introspective phase' with a cold beverage and a crazy idea. Tonight, it started after I finished chatting online with a friend where I finished with a "cu, 88"...
Where did this strange language come from and what does it mean for us digital marketing professionals? It seems that I have adopted without knowing it a hybrid between English (cu- See you) and Chinese (88- ba ba) ... Tonight I think I have come to a point where I must agree (in the most part) with Mr Schmidt, Google's CEO who recently outlined his thoughts that he saw a radically changed Internet five years from now: Eric Schmidt said, "he see's the Internet "dominated by Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time".
The trends and data-points tend to support this conclusion and given China can boast the largest pool of online users (http://www.sinotechblog.com.cn/index.php/component/content/article/1-latest-news/451-china-has-360-million-internet-users) and as well as the statistics showing Chinese have a propensity for online activities such as blogging, gaming and eCommerce it is not too much of a stretch to agree with him.
While I found myself thinking about the transition from an all "English" language Internet to a "Chinese" language Internet... I wondered if these two 'Internets' would be one in the same or would they be two quite separate 'nets' with quite different geographic/cultural/laguage boundaries? Was it going to be a slow transition or will we see the bleeding of English into the Chinese Internet language and Chinese words/phrases into the English (or Western) Internet language?
After living in China for almost 7 years I can make some observations (as a Westerner) .. I am commonly seeing the adoption of stylized English being used in QQ, MSN and Chinese blogging sites. For example,
- heike 黑客 ‘hacker’
- fensi 粉丝 ‘fans’
- ku 酷 ‘cool
- yimeier 伊妹儿‘email’
- boke 博客 ‘blog’
- xiu 秀 ‘show’
Further, I am seeing English letter initials refer to the adoption of the first letter in an English phrase or sentence (in that sense, it may also be argued that it is code-mixing, instead of adaptations in Chinese Internet language). Some examples are given below:
- gf for ‘girl friend’
- bf for ‘boy friend’
- re, short form for ‘regarding
- lol, short form for ‘laugh out loudly’
- cu, short form for ‘see you’.
As yet, I have seen few Westerners use Chinese equivalents of these examples except for the "88" in sign off..Also, the Chinese net and the Western net are quite separate- but as populations become more 'social' and reach outside their geographic boundaries I expect we will see a morphed "Internet Lingo" develop where Chinese/English terms and phrases are adopted. Just as Australian's (Thats my nationality) have adopted phrases and sayings into our English spoken language through hundreds of years of European influence and cross boarder integration.
What are the implications for marketers? Is this a transient 'pop-culture' phenomena that has it's own norms, language and social following? Will the Internet stay the same and this is all too much over analyzing? What do you think?
Written on Friday, 06 November 2009 21:57 by Matt McDougall
