Netspeak linguistic features used by Yemeni youth

Abstract

The wide spread of the internet use among the youth cannot be denied. Netspeak- a type of language displaying features that are unique to the internet- is examined here. The current paper is an attempt to study the influence of netspeak used by Yemeni youth on Arabic analyzing the  linguistic features of this newly coined written form and the challenges Arabic face. To investigate the frequency of linguistic features used by the Yemeni students netspeak a qualitative method is used limiting these features then describing and explaining them linguistically. The population includes all groups of the secondary schools and  HU students. From this population a random sample has been selected composed of ten different pages of netspeak groups  first of secondary school students and other ten pages from HU. BA students from different specialization. The findings of current study prove that the netspeak used by Yemeni youth carries the features of the spoken language of its netizins with new emerging features which pollute the purity of Arabic language and deviation from the standard orthography is common which is quite different from other papers findings where 3rabizi is indicated as the norm.