[photopress:netspeak.jpg,full,alignright]Students are prohibited from using difficult-to-understand Internet terms in their compositions during the national College Entrance Examination in 2007, or face mark deductions. That is the message delivered in the Outline for National College Entrance Examination. Internet terms refer to words and expressions that were created by online web surfers based on dialects or similarities in pronunciation.
A report on China web portal sina.com said a composition written by a middle school student in central China was rife with these intricate Internet terms, which are a fad among students, such as ‘GG’ (literally meaning elder brother), ‘Ou’ (I), ‘Sauce Purple’ (so) and ‘KPM’ ( a combo word of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and McDonalds).
Experts play down the use of Internet terms among students, a group that is considered to lack judgment and easily succumb to peer pressure. Director of the Linguistic Department at Huazhong Normal University in the central province of Hubei, Wu Zhenguo said students should be prudent while using Internet terms.
Committee Director of the China Association of Lexicography Zhou Mingjian said in a report from the official Xinhua News Agency that Internet terms cannot be used as formal expressions and students are discouraged from using them because once they are accustomed to it, it will be difficult to get rid of the habit.
The Law of the People’s Republic of China on the National Common Language and Characters, effective on March 1, 2006, states that news reports, government documents and textbooks will be labeled illegal if they use terms such as ‘MM’ (beautiful girls), ‘Dinosaur’ (ugly girls), ‘PK’ (means face-to-face duel) and ‘bean vermicelli’ (fans).
Source: China.org.cn