With the rapid development of the network, a new kind of language is formed rapidly, namely “network language”, which is so concise and vivid that most people love it very much. That’s Chinese languagelearners can hardly learn in Chinese language school, overseas students should know some knowledge about it.

The network language consists of Pinyin, abbreviations of English letters, numbers with certain meanings as well as some vivid animation or pictures. People learn Chinese in China should know that at the very beginning the network language was just a measure taken by the net potatoes to quicken the speed of chatting on the Internet. As time goes on, it becomes the conventional language that people can accept.

To keep pace with the times, most teachers start to teach network language in Mandarin learning courses. For further knowledge, we should know some characteristics of the network language in the following parts.

The first characteristic of the network language is that it is made up of characters and words, and more English letters and numbers and pictures are added as parts of it. When used as the network language, the words meaning are changed or expanded. For students who learn Mandarin in China, if you fail to understand them, you will be the “network illiteracy”.

Here are some typical and interesting examples. We say “这样子” as “酱紫”, we say “斑竹” instead of “版主”, “555” means crying and “886(拜拜喽) ” stands for “bye-bye”. There are more like “BBS”,”BLOG”, “PK”, etc.

Another feature of the network language students who study in China should know is that it is created by the network crowd and became conventional gradually. We often see words like “恐龙、美眉、霉女、青蛙、菌男、东东” in Chat and “professional” words such as “隔壁、楼上、楼下、楼主、潜水、灌水” in BBS. When we chat by QQ, we often see an animation of waving the hand to stand for “bye-bye”.

Last but not least, the network language is enriching and developing in the process of obsolete. If people who study Chinese take a summary, you will find the clear evolving line of the words used to express anger “哇噻——我操——我倒——我晕”. In this process, some words are accepted and then abandoned by the populace because only the words correspond to the development of the times can survive.

After learning the main characteristics of the network language, students may have a general idea about it. To learn Chinese language of this aspect more, we will summarize some types of the network language. The first type is the numeric type, whose words are most have the similar sound like “9494=就是就是’, “7456=气死我了” and “886=拜拜了”.

Another type is to express by translating the foreign language, mostly in the pronunciation like “伊妹儿=e-mail”, “瘟都死=windows”, “荡=download”. The type that has letters is often used if you go to school to study Mandarin. Some of them expressed by replacing the characters with the sound of the letters like “MM=妹妹, PP=漂漂, E文=英文, S=死, u=you, r=are”. Some of them are the abbreviations such as “JS=奸商 BT=变态 GG=哥哥BBS= 电子公告牌系统 OMG=Oh My God BTW=By The Way”.

Last but not least, the type with some symbols is often used when people chatting online. Most of them are the symbols for the expression. We often use “O.O” to stand for the expression of surprise and “o(∩_∩)o” or “^_^” to express the mood of happiness.

To help students learn more, we will teach Mandarin language of this aspect by listing some frequently-seen network language when we talking or surfing on the Internet. “回帖” is to reply and express your ideas after you read others’ blogs or posts. “置顶” is often used when the posts have many replies and become popular, the forum will put the posts on the top. “楼” is also has relationship with the post. When many people reply the post, the one above is called “楼上”, the one below is “楼下”.

Actually, you won’t learn too much about the network language when you go to school to study in China, but teachers will tell you the knowledge about it and some frequently used language.

For the purpose of keeping pace with the changing times, Chinese language learners can learn more by themselves to refresh their language knowledge.