RESEARCH ARTICLE Adv. Sci. Lett. 23, 1099-1103, 2017 1 Copyright © 2015 American Scientific Publishers Advanced Science Letters All rights reserved Vol. 23, No. 2, February 2017 Printed in the United States of America Old Speak or Young Speak: An Analysis of Netspeak Features in Filipino Netspeak Leah E. Gustilo 1 , Chenee M. Dino 2,3 1 De La Salle University, Manila, 1004, Philippines 2 Sacred Heart College, 3 St. Anne College, Lucena, 4302, Philippines Electronic language or Netspeak is the language of today’s generation in computer-mediated communication (CMC). It is characterized by the nonstandard and non conventional use and manipulation of symbols, characters, and lexical items. Hence, Netspeak is considered informal in existing literature. Using age as an important variable in the analysis, the researchers found that Netspeak was not an exclusive language among the young but a shared language among all age cohorts under study. This is so because all Internet users, regardless of their age attempted to use nonstandard language in virtual communication. After having analyzed the online utterances from the social media accounts of 63 respondents, the present study compared the Netspeak features of Filipino Netspeakers who belong to three age cohorts (15-25, 26-35, and 36-50). The data revealed similarities and differences in the prevalence of the 30 identified Netspeak features across age cohorts. The absence of punctuation and shortening of expressions were the most prevalent in the utterances of Filipino Netspeakers. This study foregrounds the notion of youngerspeak—the language of Netspeakers who belong to the older age brackets which is used to adjust to the language of the young. Keywords: Netspeak, Digitalk, Computer-mediated communication, Linguistic features, Age, Youngerspeak 1. INTRODUCTION Computer-mediated communication (CMC) and various electronic communications such as text messaging, instant messaging, chatting, blogging, or posting are marked by the use of Short Messaging System. Previous studies conducted attempted to investigate electronic communication involving variables that include gender 1 , new language forms 2 , linguistic features and functions among others 3 . Rafi 4 claimed that there was a ‘novice intelligible language’ that evolved through short messaging system (SMS) in text messages. This language is pidginized in order to serve the purposes and needs of a community of speakers (e.g. FB community, Twitter community, and others). This was termed as an ‘intelligible language 2 ,’ a new form of language emerging on Electronic discourse—‘internet language.’ Several features have been identified in the language used by internet users, and what characterizes it the most is that its intelligibility is ______________________________________________ Email address: cheneedino08@gmail.com not based on formal features evident in formal written discourse but on its ability to be correctly perceived by the addressee of the message. Some features observed were abbreviations, use of capitalizations and symbols, omissions, alteration of spellings, substitution of words or meanings, and grammar patterns following spoken language. The said study 2 substantiated that short messaging and internet language are forms of written discourse that seem to have their own features that deviate from formal writing. Several case studies involving the features of internet language have been conducted by Bodomo 5 . These case studies on text messaging, instant messaging, and online gaming revealed the use of Acronymy, a form of shortening, which he called a “new linguistic form” (p.14). In his collection of Acronymy, he theorized that one challenge in the Internet is its characteristic of being multilingual; thus, he proposed for a Unicode system that is compatible to all languages. He identified Acronymy or shortenings as an example of new linguistic forms which include the (1) Acronyms of sentences, (2) Number homophones (near homophones), (3) Combination of