What makes TikTok Brainrot English any less valid of a dialect than AAVE? How is calling TikTok brainrot a "bastardization" not the same kind of elitism as it would be to call AAVE a "bastardization" of standard American English? (Or even call American English a "bastardization" of British English?)
Iām not a linguist but TikTok slang is often intentionally nonsensical, confusing, and redundant, and much of it is used ironically. And a lot of it is motivated by avoiding censorship (unalive vs kill) instead of something that evolved organically like a language or dialect.
On the other hand, AAVE and other dialects follow internally consistent rules to convey meaning. As opposed to TikTok brainrot lingo that doesnāt function like a normal language.
So I guess it might not be āless validā but itās certainly different than a normal dialect and doesnāt function the same way one does so itās a different phenomenon.
There's a better way to avoid censorship and it's euphemisms. Genuinely incomprehensible to me how people resort to making sound-alikes and essentially baby speak (unalive, sewer slide) rather than the many different ways that have been come up with to talk about it (such as pass away, kick the bucket, end up six feet under, life cut short, taking a life)
Very good point, dialects often form in situations like a persecuted group not being able to speak freely and wanting to have an in-group lingo that is inscrutable to outsiders.
I think we could probably distinguish the censorship-speak that is a logical reaction to those restrictions from the skibidi 67 fanum Ohio stuff thatās intentionally nonsensical to everyone, not just an outgroup. Like the point of them is to be nonsensical and confuse outsiders without an accordant actual meaning for the in-group.
As another random thing, the rapidly evolving nature of TikTok slang makes it different too. All dialects evolve, but not nearly this fast. Which contributes to the brainrotty aspect of it, itāll never settle into an accepted stable dialect because new random meaningless stuff will keep popping up and replacing the old words once those get boring.
"bastardization" is just what old people say when language evolves naturally and they don't like it be it's slightly different to what they're used to (it takes minimal effort to undersea and update your knowledge)Ā
Ok kids in their feelings, I didn't argue how language evolves nor did I argue about making an effort to learn and undersea as you become an old head fr fr smdftb no cap yeet my harambe
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u/Happy-Oral-4452 15d ago
No, the bastardization of it is called āTikTok Brainrotā.
Someone end my misery.