Thursday, December 02, 2004
New language for South Africa?
By Haru Mutasa
Highway Africa News Agency (HANA)
Is there a twelfth official language in South Africa? If you are in Cape Town this week you would be forgiven for thinking so.
It is acronyms galore in the Mother city as a new language invades and wreaks havoc inside the International Convention Centre where the annual Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) conference is being held.
The very technical verbal diarrhoea has delegates at the conference speaking in tongues in a language only they seem to understand.
“WHOIS Crisp?”....
ICANN and ALAC must work together...
GAC can not exist in a vacuum.”
These are just some of the many statements making the rounds inside the building – abbreviations of much longer terms used to describe the Internet and how recent developments can be used to better Africa and its people.
Anyone interested in learning this new lingo can do so by either attending the conference, taking part in the webcast live on ICANN's website, www.icann.org, or by joining one of the ICANN-related mailing lists.
It was believed the 21st century would bring with it a lifestyle of dramatic proportions – ultra fast cars, out of this world trendy wear and endless, affordable trips to the moon and back.
A few years since the turn of the century, none of these predictions have materialised in massive proportions and people go about their business following the same routine they have been doing for years.
Things seem normal or are they? For Cape Town, normality will only return on Sunday when delegates leave and take their language, South Africa's shortest ever recorded week-long twelfth official language, with them.
By Haru Mutasa
Highway Africa News Agency (HANA)
Is there a twelfth official language in South Africa? If you are in Cape Town this week you would be forgiven for thinking so.
It is acronyms galore in the Mother city as a new language invades and wreaks havoc inside the International Convention Centre where the annual Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) conference is being held.
The very technical verbal diarrhoea has delegates at the conference speaking in tongues in a language only they seem to understand.
“WHOIS Crisp?”....
ICANN and ALAC must work together...
GAC can not exist in a vacuum.”
These are just some of the many statements making the rounds inside the building – abbreviations of much longer terms used to describe the Internet and how recent developments can be used to better Africa and its people.
Anyone interested in learning this new lingo can do so by either attending the conference, taking part in the webcast live on ICANN's website, www.icann.org, or by joining one of the ICANN-related mailing lists.
It was believed the 21st century would bring with it a lifestyle of dramatic proportions – ultra fast cars, out of this world trendy wear and endless, affordable trips to the moon and back.
A few years since the turn of the century, none of these predictions have materialised in massive proportions and people go about their business following the same routine they have been doing for years.
Things seem normal or are they? For Cape Town, normality will only return on Sunday when delegates leave and take their language, South Africa's shortest ever recorded week-long twelfth official language, with them.
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