Dogs Are Doggos: An Internet Language Built Around Love for the Puppers

Sometimes heck is censored as h* ck. Matt Nelson, who runs the WeRateDogs Twitter account (@dog_rates), says tweets from WeRate popularized h* ck and its derivatives. "I'm sure someone else did that before," he says, "but it was something original to me and I used it to such an extent that people associate it with [@dog_rates] now."

bpicolo2• 9 years ago

Huh, hadn't seen it around. Interesting. (And missed that line)

milquetoastaf• 9 years ago

that's the joke

Ultramax2• 9 years ago

It's not a joke, some people are like that.

ryanisnan2• 9 years ago

Disappointed. I was expecting a dictionary or something with a bit more structure.

DoctorNick2• 9 years ago

"Harsh realm" = "bummer"

ryanisnan2• 9 years ago

This makes me feel slightly less lost than when I am watching episodes of the pengest munch. I am totally uncool.

tedmiston• 9 years ago

Would be interesting to see if someone could build a doggo / puppo / etc classifier like the flowchart linked above

accountyaccount• 9 years ago

As the article briefly mentioned: I don't think doggo originated in memes, I've been using doggo for about 20 years. It's kind of like a Welsh "hey boyo" for dogs.

AlexandrB• 9 years ago

The Russians had this figured out centuries ago with a robust grammar for diminutives [1] that can be applied to almost any noun. Meanwhile us poor english speakers are forced to create new words instead :(

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminutive

thegeomaster• 9 years ago

Not just Russian—all Slavic languages I'm aware of have this concept. There's also the opposite, an augmentative, which is a modified version of a noun that conveys stronger intensity.

kornish2• 9 years ago

Also Spanish: the -ito and -isimo suffixes magnify the intensity or size of an adjective or noun, respectively.

e.g. hermana is sister, hermanita is little sister.

kmicklas3• 9 years ago

magnify the intensity or size of an adjective or noun, respectively

Not respectively.

kome• 9 years ago

Italian as well.

msoucy• 9 years ago

From my limited knowledge, Esperanto uses -ido to mean "small"/"baby", so "hundo" is dog but "hundido" is "puppy".

kmicklas3• 9 years ago

-id- is offspring, -et- is the generic diminutive.

piaste• 9 years ago

You Anglophones do have at least two diminutive suffixes: -ling and -let. They have neutral or slightly negative connotations, though.

Houshalter2• 9 years ago

"Dogling" or "doglet". Doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

dom0• 9 years ago

German also has this, so it's quite curious that English doesn't.

dwringer• 9 years ago

The word "dog" already has a well-standardized diminutive form in English, it's just gained a bit of a risque connotation (especially when read online). It is interesting though that "doggo" is seen as a replacement. I thought "doggo" is most commonly used in references to dogs who are, in fact, lying doggo.

edpazu4• 9 years ago

The word "dog" already has a well-standardized diminutive form in English, it's just gained a bit of a risque connotation

What?

kmicklas3• 9 years ago

English doesn't have a single very common diminutive suffix like most European languages, but it actually does have very many derivational noun suffixes that correspond to diminutives or augmentatives in other languages and all have slightly different shades of meaning. Doggo, for example, has many friends:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-o#Suffix

masklinn• 9 years ago

There are corgos and clouds, fluffers and floofs, woofers and boofers.

Objection, floof and fluffers are not limited to doggos as amply demonstrated by e.g. https://twitter.com/AnneWHilborn/status/842444796824305665 or https://twitter.com/AnneWHilborn/status/834432563452211201 (#teamfloof has plenty of non-doggo floof)

gkanapathy• 9 years ago

Basically, it's Australian

jpm_sd• 9 years ago

It's not a "language", it's a few words.

randyrand• 9 years ago

Bad doggo. Take that back.

fokinsean• 9 years ago

Here's another info chart, The Doggo Kingdom

https://i.redd.it/5e7bja88gckx.jpg

IanCal2• 9 years ago

It's odd. On the one side, so many of these kind of things feel cringeworthy and weird.

But then some things like this seem to go just that bit further and the effort and feeling behind them makes it all just wonderful and fun again.

Either way it's quite fascinating just how quickly new languages or dialects appear and spread.

Slight addition to the other things in this thread so far: I've really loved the description of "snip snap doggos, not woof bork doggos" to describe scorpions.

3131s• 9 years ago

It's odd. On the one side, so many of these kind of things feel cringeworthy and weird.

It's all cringe to me.

Can't believe that this makes it on HN, but post an article about drone warfare and watch it get flagged hard.

Ultramax2• 9 years ago

Is this the autistic spectrum of the internet expressing itself? Or just kids messing around?

aaronhoffman2• 9 years ago

found by /r/fellowkids https://www.reddit.com/r/FellowKids/search?q=npr&restrict_sr...

Houshalter2• 9 years ago

I don't get what they are so upset about. Is it so taboo to write an article about internet culture?

aaronhoffman2• 9 years ago

I wouldn't say taboo, it's just a "kids these days" type of story. Someone taking time to analyze something internet culture is doing just for laughs.

It's like critical analysis of an inside joke.

pnathan• 9 years ago

This is one of the most fun and innocent memes out there. It's a great evolution of language.

Dogs Are Doggos: An Internet Language Built Around Love for the Puppers

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