This afternoon I came across a fascinating new bit of language trivia from China Daily.
“Oh My Lady Gaga” has replaced “Oh My God” or OMG in Chinese web culture. As the article states, “since god doesn’t exist and Lady Gaga does, it makes sense.”
Interestingly, many Chinese don’t know where the phrase originated and attribute it Hunan TV’s Happy Camp where presenters used it on a recent episode. In fact, on the website Soso, which is similar to Yahoo! Answers, the most popular response is that Happy Camp originated the phrase. (The article points out the real origin comes from the U.S. show Ugly Betty).
The most interesting part of this article to me is on the impact of English web slang (LOL, IMAO) on the Chinese language. Of course, English teachers have been up in arms over the impact of web slang on our own language as well and with more people turning to mobile and micro communication, I don’t see that ending anytime soon.