Is youth
lingo
widening the generation gap, ruining Chinese language?
On Wednesday, Beijing Daily warned youths that they should not let internet slang deepen the generation gap, after The People's Daily had launched a discussion on Chinese microblog Weibo on how to "explain" the youth's internet
buzzwords
to parents the night before.
周三，
《北京日报》警告年轻人，
不要让网络“
黑话
”加深代沟。就在前一天晚上，《人民日报》在微博上发起了一场关于如何向父母“解释”年轻人的网络流行语的讨论。
The post was widely shared and got 40,000 likes.
People were commenting that they couldn't keep up with the rapidly developing internet lingo in China.
Chinese netizens are known to be very creative.
这条微博被广泛转发，并获得了4万次点赞。人们评论称，他们跟不上中国迅速发展的网络“黑话”了。众所周知，中国网民非常有创造力。
"I don't understand the internet anymore, and I'm not even a parent" was the top-rated comment below the post.
Critics also said that the use of slang and
abbreviations
is ruining Chinese language and people's capability to write and remember Chinese characters.
该帖子下最热门的的一条评论这样写道：“我还没当上家长就已经看不懂了。”批评人士还表示，网络“黑话”和缩略语的使用正在对汉语以及人们书写、记忆汉字的能力造成破坏。
Is youth lingo dividing people of different age groups?
Teens want to be different from their parents, so it's natural for them to create and use their own linguistic terms to demonstrate that.
年轻人的“黑话”是否将人们按不同的年龄段进行了划分？青少年想要和他们的父母有所不同，所以很自然地通过创造和使用他们自己的语言术语来证明这一点。
Youth lingo is a global phenomenon and has existed long before the internet, and in some linguistic regions, young people create their own language that goes beyond rigid linguistic rules.
年轻人“黑话”是一种全球性的现象，早在互联网诞生之前就已经存在，在一些语言地区，年轻人
超越刻板的语言规则
创造了自己的语言。
In doing so, young people are indeed driving linguistic change.
They aren't the only factor influencing language development, but they can indeed transform how future generations communicate.
Will Chinese internet lingo have the transformative power?
如此一来，年轻人确实在推动语言的变革。他们虽然不是影响语言发展的唯一因素，但确实可以改变后代们的交流方式。
中国的网络“黑话”会有这样变革性的力量吗?
As pinyin gets widely used when texting or writing on mobile phone or computer, while less and less people write characters by hand, people gradually forget how to write them.
随着拼音在手机或电脑上广泛使用，
越来越少的人去提笔写字了，人们渐渐地将不会写字。
The phenomenon has got a name in China: "Character
amnesia
".
This year's latest slang terms add a further simplification: the use of pinyin
acronyms
.
这种现象在中国被称为“汉字健忘症”。如今最新的网络“黑话”又做了进一步的简化：使用拼音首字母缩写。
"Awsl," in pinyin, for instance, means oh, I'm gonna die, and is used if something is too cute or
adorable
to bear.
例如，
“Awsl”
拼音的含义是“啊，我死了”，该词用来表达某事物太过可爱（
或可爱的让人受不了
）。
"Pyq" stands for pengyou quan, the social feed on the popular Chinese social media app WeChat, and "nsdd" stands for you're right.
“Pyq”指的是“
朋友圈
”，是中国社交媒体应用微信上的社交板块，“nsdd”指的是“你说得对”。
Linguists call Chinese the oldest written language in the world.
Of course, it has been evolving and developing over the years.
Chinese internet lingo is unlikely to replace the existing use of Mandarin Chinese, but will rather be enriching it by adding another layer.
语言学家将汉语称作是
世界上最古老的书面语言。
当然，汉语这些年来也一直在演化和发展。中国的网络“黑话”不太可能取代现有的汉语普通话，但它将通过增加另一层含义来丰富汉语。
Older generations don't have to feel left out, and certainly don't have to fear a degradation of Chinese language.
While language development is
inevitable
, internet slang is not going to let 6,000 years of Chinese written language turn on its head overnight.
老一辈们不必觉得被遗忘了，当然也不必担心汉语会退化。虽然语言的发展是不可避免的，但网络“黑话”不会让有着六千年历史的汉语书面语言在一夜之间发生翻天覆地的变化。
(全文共409个词，标红单词为考研重难点词汇
，
打开小程序边看文章边背单词
)
lingo
[ˈlɪŋɡoʊ] n. 行话；
术语；
隐语
buzzword
[ˈbʌzwɜːrd] n. 流行词
abbreviation
[əˌbrivɪ'eʃən] n. 缩写；
缩写词
amnesia
[æmˈniːʒə] n. 健忘症；
记忆缺失
acronym
[ˈækrənɪm] n. 首字母缩略词
adorable
[əˈdɔːrəbl] adj. 可爱的；
可敬重的，值得崇拜的
inevitable
[ɪnˈevɪtəbl] adj. 必然的，不可避免的
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