Liquid`Zenio Fan Club - Page 4

You can talk about languages as having a prestige variable. Some languages or dialects are perceived to be more prestigious than others in a specific domain, and this correlates with the relative socioeconomic / political power of people who speak that language. States often have language policies that reinforce this and it becomes socially ingrained to the point where if people speak a particular way, they are judged on their socioeconomic status, and why you only hear certain regional dialects on the news--> what we call 'standard English' is just a variety of English... anyways.

English is generally regarded to have a higher prestige status than a lot of other languages due to notions of global capital, what determines success etc. People see it (usually erroneously) as a gateway to success.

In the starcraft community, Korea is the mecca of skill/culture, and as a result korean starcraft terms have prestige because they are associated with a specific type of 'prestige': access to the traditional cultural center of starcraft.

We say 'fighting' or 'hwaiting' as a result of this-- the term arose in korea and it encodes a particular idea, and people use the term outside of korea due to the 'prestige' associated with it. (prestige is more a technical term, its not completely apt though).

Zenio says 'why the hell are you guys saying hwaiting, it should be 'go zenio' -- for similar but opposite reasons.

Really interesting.