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Специфика Интернет-сленга немецкоязычной молодежи
The article deals with specific processes typical of informal written communication among German-speaking young people. Using this method of communication the modern young people of Germany, Austria and Switzerland employ unusual forms of greetings, farewells and addresses to each other. A specific place is held by creation of a unique Internet image by means of the invention of nicknames where gender distinctions are convincingly revealed. The integral feature of the Internet slang of young people are abbreviations among which, as statistical calculations show, acronyms and sound abbreviations are more frequent, while apocopesare less common. The research shows the abbreviations which are used only in written communication at forums and websites among which we more and more often see abbreviation with numbers. German-speaking users willingly resort to abbreviating English borrowings as well. The process of emerging new abbreviations in the course of virtual communication is so intensive that even annual dictionaries of the German youth language do not manage to register them. To compensate for a lack of auditory perception and eye contact (gestures, mimics, voice, intonation) speakers use numerous non-verbal means of communication (they repeat letters, punctuation marks, use capital letters, change lettering). Inflectives, which are apocopic non-finite verb forms enclosed between various markers, are gaining ground. Along with inflective constructions there are a lot of elliptical ones, which are characterized by omission of these or those elements of the utterance, and also enclictic word forms which are formed by means of joining a syllable or a word to the previous word with the loss of accent and formation of a single phonetic whole. The considered means of written communication are, first of all, timesaving and, secondly, allow speakers to create their unique language that insiders only can understand. All findings are supported by examples from Internet websites and forums for young people.