BY CARLOS FINLAY

March 2011 saw the Oxford Dictionary welcome ‘LOL’ and ‘OMG’ to its pages and, since then, we have been hit with an unwavering production line of new technology.

The outcome? A plentiful harvest of new words for us to relish.

But when we use the pronoun ‘us’, who are we really including? In no way can we dismiss the younger generation as the largest consumers of modern technology, and therefore the greatest producers of technolanguage.

Global powerhouse Samsung commissioned its own investigation into this, to which it found the result to be a “seismic generational gap” between young and old. It appears our new language use is leaving the older generation behind.

As rational as it may seem for someone of the older generation not to comprehend the definition of ‘bae,’ nor would it seem sensible to picture our parents uploading pictures of their afternoon tea with the caption ‘OMG, tea with the besties.’

But it does come as a surprise that 72 per cent of British adults are regular users of social media.

So many linguists choose to dismiss is that, although technology and its ‘young’ denizens may be propelling language change, our elders were too once the creators and consumers of new words.

Language has always, and will always, be subject to change.

Else, we’d still be speaking Latin