Abstract:

The fast development of technology and the massive use of social media by generation

Z contributed in changing the English language. The fact that there is a constant change in the

English language throughout time imposes regular language updates on the previous

generations like millennials and boomers to catch on the lingo of generation Z. The previous

generations especially boomers insist on not using the lingo of generation Z as they find it

silly and interact less with them and that eventually leads to a misunderstanding between two

speakers who belong to different generations. The main purpose of the study is to determine

the importance of learning the lingo of generation Z. The research design used in this study is

non-experimental and the tools used are questionnaires given to the English language teachers

who belong to generation X or generation Y to see if they can guess the meaning of words

and expressions used by Gen Z. Analysis of the responses demonstrated that more than half of

the teachers could not guess the meaning of words and misunderstood the expressions. This

study definitely confirm that people who belong to previous generations and update their

language regularly understand much more words from the lingo of Gen Z than those who do

not update their language.

Keywords: English language, generation Z, boomers, the lingo, millennials, words,

expressions.