How Gen Z and TikTok are changing the way we speak - The Global Story podcast, BBC World Service

Hello, I'm Lucy Hockings. From the BBC  World Service, this is The Global Story. For many thousands of years,  language has been changing.

Here in the UK, the gradual departure from what became known as the Queen's English is a trend which has often been characterised as a threat to cultural identity. But with the advent of social  media, the pace of change may be running away from us. Phrases like "it's giving", "rizz", "no cap", these are all terms which we attribute to internet culture and specifically to younger, millennial and gen Z demographics.

Today we're considering how the mass migration to living our lives online is having an impact on the spoken word in the real world. It's even made its mark on  the Oxford English Dictionary. Well, with me here in the studio today is  former BBC journalist, author and linguist Sophia Smith Galer and Neil Edgeller,  who is from BBC Learning English.

Sophia, Neil, lovely to have  you with us on the pod. Hi. Hi.

Hello, Lucy. Neil, last night I sat with my teenage kids as I now know you did as well and said, "I'm discussing language tomorrow. Things have changed.

I'm hearing these words from you all the time. Can we talk about it? " And they were straight away like, "Mum, don't do it.

Don't use the words. Don't embarrass yourself. You will never come back from this at all.

You know, like this is just steer clear, play it straight". What did you say to your teenage kids? Pretty much exactly the same conversation. 

I've become aware of this whole range of vocabulary used by this generation that  seems completely and utterly exclusive and they find it funny when I try and use  those expressions because I use them badly. I mean you're such a boomer, if you  basically you start using these words you're tainted and it's a no-go. And Sophia you don't have kids but I mean you're so aware of how language is changing.

And you're even writing a book at the moment about linguicide. What actually is linguicide? So linguicide is the phenomenon of a language  disappearing and perhaps even dying or becoming extinct.

And this is happening  around the world at an alarming rate. So a language disappearing because it's been  criminalised, war, genocide, other obvious examples. But linguicide equally can be  more covert.

So linguists also described a language becoming associated with  shame and speakers being so ashamed of speaking that language,  they begin to speak another. And tell us about your job, Neil. You're  creating content to help people learn English.

We make videos and podcasts and web pages to  help learners of English around the world, whatever level they are, to teach them  English, but also to help them to enjoy themselves in English. Well, language is obviously the social tool that we all use to communicate. But as we've already discussed, it's so different depending on the generation that's talking and we alter our language depending on who we're talking to.

When it comes to our kids and what we're seeing particularly with the younger generations, Neil, what sort of words are you seeing emerge at the moment? Now we're gonna mention some of the  words that we're not supposed to mention. Okay, I'm gonna let you do it.

So I think of all of the  things I've heard  recently, the most fascinating is this word, skibidi. That was the first one that came up at my dinner table as well. Can you use it in a sentence?

Well, I don't think I can  effectively. I can try  and I get laughed at. But it's very,  very fluid grammatically.

So for example, I have heard the expression, the skibidi rizzler. Rizzler is connected to this word  rizz, which we may come on to talk about as well. But skibidi seems to be able to be thrown in almost anywhere.

And nobody, including my kids, can tell me what it really means. I think that's part of the whole sort of exclusivity of each generation's use of language. To the point about exclusivity and saying,  "Mum, please don't say this word.

" We should think of language speaking also as identity  making. So if you are in a subgroup and you use particular phrases to signify 'I am part  of this group', the minute you start hearing these phrases adopted outside of the group,  it's not the in-group language anymore. So it stops being the in-group language of teenagers, for example, because mum's using it.

And then they'll just start using another one. But Sophia, what Neil and I are finding  challenging is this is changing so quickly all the time. Neil's already mentioned rizz.

I  remember doing quite a kind of academic interview around the word rizz when  it was the Oxford word of the year. The Oxford word of the year has been revealed  and this year it's rizz. Now, if you've no idea what that means, don't worry, you  might just be over 30.

I'm lucky I've got teenagers, I know this one. The kids are not using rizz anymore. They might  use it in a slightly patronising ironic way.

But Neil's now saying they're  using rizzler. What's rizzler? A rizzler is a person who has rizz.

Duh. See? I'm getting myself into all sorts of trouble  here and all sorts of traps.

But it is so, it's evolving so quickly. It's evolving really quickly. And if you think about in the past how languages developed and changed.

A language will always change because our needs as people change and different and new things happen. And in the past, you may have lived in a remote village and the only language contact or contact you had with any kind of linguistic innovation would have been some trader rolling into town and then moving forward or maybe perhaps you would move. Today, if you're consuming mass media in social media, you're actually seeing a very diverse array of different voices from around the world.

I can be speaking to my nephews at home in New Zealand, a world away, it seems to me, and yet they're using the same words as my teenage kids here in London. That wasn't the case when we were younger. No, it wasn't.

And that's part of this  homogenisation that social media brings, that the kids are using the same slang globally. When  I was at school, the words that we would use to describe a really bright person or a  less bright person might be different from the words used by someone who was brought up  in a different part of the same country. Neil is it just video-based social media or  is there influence here around text sites and micro blogging and things as well?

Absolutely yes and a lot of the new vocabulary that we've seen emerging over the last few years comes from blogging and from online communities communicating through text. People are walking around and saying LOL and FOMO and YOLO to each other. That's an interesting development.

And we're saying LOL. We're not saying L-O-L.  We're not saying F-O-M-O.

We've adopted them into the sort of existing lexical  structure that we have so that they sound like normal words. And that didn't take long? Didn't take long at all, no.

And with some of these words, the skibidi, the rizz, rizzler, no cap. Where do they come from? Is it just, is it from different cultural groups?

Is it from different sectors of society? Where are they actually emerging from? A lot of the words are being innovated within  in-groups and then they get introduced to the mainstream.

We're seeing a lot of  vocabulary coming from black and Latino LGBT culture in the US. We're seeing loads of  expressions coming from that, like "it's giving", "slay", all come from those spaces. We're  also seeing language emerging from what actually were incel subculture words from  even the 2000s.

Some of these expressions don't even come from the 2010s. They're a  little older than we think. When it comes to social media and language change, we think a  term is new, but in reality, it's likely been in circulation for some time before a sort  of more influential person perhaps uses the term and then we see the words leave these  peripheries and leave these subgroups they become mainstream and it's these words  that then become more widely adopted.

And Neil do you think it's also like with our  kids and I'm trying to think back to when I was young as well it's a bit of an act of rebellion? Yeah absolutely yes and I think the interesting thing about the language change we're seeing at the moment is just the pace in comparison to pre-internet discourse. You know, the words are there all around the world immediately.

Some get picked up, some don't. And that happened before, but it was just much slower. I mean, we need to cast our mind back before 1989, the World Wide Web.

What was happening with language before then. Well, I remember when I was at school. Back in the day.

The reinvention of the word wicked, meaning  great or cool or whatever. I think I am just by about a year too old to use that and feel  comfortable using it, even though it's been in circulation for about 30 years now. So  these words have always come about and been reinvented, this, what they call semantic  shift, where a word has an original meaning and then suddenly has a new meaning.

And it's  all tied up with the exclusivity and stuff. But it's the pace with which it happens  these days, which is really astounding. Sophia, you speak many languages.

A couple. Italian, Arabic. I studied Spanish and Arabic at university and my family speaks Italian.

I grew up hearing it but not speaking it. So what about these other languages in the  world? Is it the same?

I mean, are they experiencing the same kind of changes in  these words that we are seeing in English? Oh, certainly. All languages are experiencing  the phenomena we've described, such as linguistic innovation and adopting new  words.

The obvious difference that we may observe in other languages is the influence  of English and the fact that English as a language, it holds prestige  in so many global domains. And there are moves right around the world  to try and protect language. I mean, I spend some time in French speaking Canada and  there's real moves to sort of stop the creep of English into French that spoke in there. 

Giorgia Meloni, the leader in Italy right now, very protective of the Italian language. Countries have different attitudes towards how much they try and control linguistic change, which defies control. Languages are, even speaking to linguicide that I'm writing about, the idea that a language can die must therefore mean a language can live.

So as living things, they're really difficult to control. And if you say to people, you can't use this word that we're now hearing lots of people say you must use the French version. It's kind of coming a little bit too late because the French version didn't immediately dominate or resonate with speakers.

So it can actually be quite challenging. You're trying to reverse time almost in something like that. Neil, I wonder if words as well and phrases that we use can sometimes just be fashionable.

I mean, I'm not talking about rizz, only lasting 18 months or whatever, but other words and phrases that grab hold and are trendy but then kind of die away again, almost like fashion or clothing or music. Yeah, I think that's right. You can look at  expressions which are used by many people over a short period of time that then kind  of vanish.

So we have at BBC Learning English podcast called The English We Speak. We look  at idiomatic expressions that are sort of trending at the time. A couple of years  ago, we were talking about blended working, blended working, working  at home and in the office.

Yeah, I haven't heard that one for a while. People don't use it anymore. We all say hybrid working now.

So yes, there is a fashion for these words, they come and go. And Sophia, you've not just been looking at  how our vocabulary has changed, but it's the way we say things as well. And this notion of  up-talk, particularly sort of rising at the end of a sentence.

I'm from New Zealand. I  mean, we all speak like that at home and in the antipodes. I also wondered if it's  not just social media that's influencing the way that we speak.

It's maybe  years of everyone watching Neighbours. We have always used up-talk. I mean, it's  most characteristic, I think, for asking questions.

I just did it there, asking  questions. That would be up-talk with this rising intonation at the end of the phrase. When  it comes to social media and using up-talk, something that I've written about in the  past is how asking is there a TikTok voice or accent, is there a way that I speak, that I  adopt when I'm making a TikTok video.

The idea is that when we make video content, we use a  lot of rising intonation possibly to relate to our audience. It's more engaging. It's more engaging.

Another theory is that I'm keeping you  listening. The rising intonation suggests there's more to come. You're hooking people.

Hooking people in. When it comes to social  media video, if I can complete a video retaining someone's attention, it's more  likely to perform better on the algorithm. So actually what's possibly happening is creators  are furthering linguistic innovation based on algorithmic direction, which is fascinating.

Neil, speaking of intonation, what about the change to pronunciation? Are we seeing some British words change and they're now said in a much more American way? There used to be a much greater distinction between the way Americans would say or pronounce a word and the way that British people would and now that's more fluid and we're not able to say with such certainty that that's American English and that's British English, so let's have an example of the word which I say as 'schedule'.

Younger members of BBC Learning English say 'schedule', and 'schedule' is what we used to say was the American pronunciation. What about grammar then, Neil? Are we  seeing those changes?

They must surely be slower. Grammar really does change slowly. You can look at, for example, you could pick up a copy of Frankenstein, which was written 200 years ago and absolutely understand it completely.

There's nothing in the grammatical structures which will confuse you. But something that has happened and has happened more quickly recently because probably of social media is something known as verbing which is turning nouns into verbs. I love doing this.

And the most obvious one is Google to Google or to friend. We are podcasting. And so that is actually a grammatical change  which we have seen accelerate recently.

Sophia, is language change picking  up momentum? Is it getting faster? As media will change, linguistic innovation  will change.

So it's already so hyperfast and powerful in the current vertical video climate  that we're in and the amount of language we are exposed to. It's hard to imagine how  that can get even sort of more hyperactive, but I'm quite confident it will. And Neil, in terms of your job, do you love all these changes to the language?

Are you slightly horrified sometimes? I'm not horrified in the slightest. I know lots  of people are, and they think that it's wrong and that mistakes are being made.

But  language is dynamic. No one here is sitting talking like Chaucer, You know, language  changes and I think it's exciting and we need to embrace it and at BBC Learning English we  try to describe language as it is rather than prescribe the way it ought to be. What about the future of language?

If we could look ahead Sophia, what do you think's going to happen in the next 20, 30 years? I think a lot of the future is predictable  in that when I am in my 40s, 50s, 60s, I'm probably going to start thinking why are my  kids or the kids around me saying all these bizarre words that I've sort of never heard of. And what do you think, Neil, do you think the other thing that might happen is that we'll see some language sadly die out, some languages, because of the prevalence of English, the prevalence of what people are consuming online is going to really influence what's spoken in the home?

Yeah, unfortunately, that is a reality. I mean,  languages are dying all the time. And one of the features of language in the  social media age is homogenisation.

Linguicide is such an urgent and pressing  issue because it's believed by the end of the century that we are in half of the  world's languages will disappear. I have a positive story to tell from New  Zealand about that, about how much more Māori is spoken in New Zealand than when I was  young. And when we talk about how quickly things change, when I go back home, I  can't believe how much more Māori has just spoken in everyday life, among people just  casually, it's not a big thing at all.

They are an example to the world. They are  used all the time in language revitalisation work as examples of how a language that  appears to be dying, becoming extinct, whatever phrase you prefer, can  revitalise and acquire new speakers. I can't have any conversation about anything  that looks at the future anymore without mentioning AI.

Oh yeah. Is there an  influence there as well? Is that going to change language?

Interestingly AI is being used again if we  look at linguicide and endangered languages. I've done reporting looking at how AI is  helping people revive their languages or create resources very quickly that are able to  support speakers who want to reclaim or revitalise a language but again we're seeing  examples where perhaps the AI tools being made, especially out of endangered languages  where accuracy is so important because there aren't lots of sources necessarily  for them, and the AI hallucinating making up words or expressions or grammars for these  languages we described as being of low resource, like there's not loads of training data  to train in AI. I would say AI isn't all bad.

It brings lots of very useful tools for communities,  but it kind of has to be observed and watched. And if it's misbehaving,  it has to be told off. Well, it's been wicked to have you  both on the podcast.

Sophia, thank you. Thank you. Neil, good to see you, thanks.

Thank you. If you want more episodes of The Global Story, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. We do one big story in depth every day and don't forget to subscribe.

Thanks for watching, goodbye.