Were you today years old when you understood what a meme is?

In this article, we take a look at memes that contain text – Apostroph Group is a language service provider, after all. How do memes influence and change language? Is there a new form of expression coming out of the internet? Whether language purists like it or not, new language trends are being created online that are a long way off what traditionally might be considered to be the norm. Memes and the like are supposed to be entertaining more than anything, but they can also be extremely lucrative. Brands use memes to show how cool and trendy they are, as do political parties and other groups trying to win the public over. So what was once original, humorous or satirical entertainment has in fact become a marketing tool.

What are memes and where do they come from?

Memes mainly come from the English-speaking world and refer to well-known events, for example from films and popular series, or to celebrities. And this is where things get interesting at a linguistic level because when memes are taken into another language, they are either left in their original state or of course translated. Translations of memes are usually literal and far from idiomatic. However, because people come across them so often online, these unusual phrases soon become accepted and are incorporated into common usage.

It’s no coincidence that English expressions are used in memes in other languages. Authors of memes often want to make use of the humorous slang vibe that so many English phrases have and that is often lacking in other languages. One example that springs to mind is the sentence “I was today years old when I learned that…” that has come out of the internet. This phrase is used to express a person’s surprise at the fact that they have only just learned something important or something that is common knowledge late on in life, along the lines of the phrase “I have just found out that...” In the example below from Austria, the person is surprised to have just found out that the meatloaf they particularly like contains insects! The English expression itself is of course not really correct as it uses the word “today” instead of a person’s age. Technically, you cannot be “today” years old – a number should be used in place of the word “today”. But the choice of the word “today” is of course intentional so that the statement can be used over and over again. So it’s not really surprising that the sentence ends up being incorrect when translated into other languages. The use of commas and other punctuation doesn’t seem to be all that important in memes. Memes are all about quickly transmitting a feeling that is instantly recognisable in an uncomplicated way.

It’s fascinating that German speakers in particular have decided to take on this kind of “untranslatable” and original syntagma unchanged. It shows a willingness to adopt the linguistic and cultural codes of the English-speaking online community. But it also shows that German slang often doesn’t have the equivalents to be able to translate memes fully. Is it a case of laziness? Or does it in fact show a person’s desire to play with language or perhaps demonstrate that they have mastered the codes of another culture? It’s difficult to provide a definitive answer to any of these questions. But what we can say is that language barriers have become more permeable and the internet is contributing to the development of a cultural and linguistic melting pot by bringing people together.