Spanische und deutsche Chats im Vergleich. Kn S 1 deutsche Neografie GBn?

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Why is it important?

Alternative spellings can be observed in different genres of CMC as well as in different languages. But it seems that not every language develops a neography, i.e. a set of procedures to economize the process of writing by using alternative spellings. The present study compares samples from German and Spanish chat channels with regard to the willingly used deviations from the orthographic norm. It shows that German chatters use less and different types of alternative spellings - mainly based on the colloquial German speech - than Spanish chatters do. In a second step, the paper tries to give an explanation for the obvious lack of a German neography, considering the depth of the two orthographic systems in question as well as the availability of letter-/number-homophones.