Language evolution is not an exact science, so it is difficult to predict what will happen to a word or expression. As is well known, there are many external elements that can influence the recovery or death of a term: “Que us bombin!”, as Xavier Trias used to say.
It is worth saying that the case of Twitter is a unique case, because it has generated more words than other social networks. We do not have derivatives from Facebook or Instagram. Instead, from Twitter we have created the nouns tweet and tweeter/tweeter, and also the verb to tweet. This is a good find regarding the name, and so it is very surprising that when a name works, its owner changes it. But each one knows their miseries, of course, and each one marks ground as they see fit.
In the case of Catalan, in addition to tuit, tuitaire and tuitejar, piulada, piulador and piular have been created, based on the original English translation. It has also happened with American Spanish, where in some areas they use trill and trill for tweeting and tweeting, which are also direct translations from English.
But you can see that Twitter is over and now it will be called X, as if they didn’t know its real name. The X is the most enigmatic letter of all, both in mathematics, when the unknown must be cleared up, and when the identity of someone is unknown, in reality or in fiction, and an X is attributed to him: Mr. X .
What will happen from now on: will we stop tweeting and call it with a derivative of the X? I see it difficult, because with the X it is difficult to create derivatives. Rather, we will continue using the same words, a logical inheritance that, in the history of the language, has happened often.
The cars we drive, now with a gasoline or electric motor, inherited the name of horse-drawn carriages. On the other hand, in American Spanish and Portuguese they call them cars, because in that inheritance they chose another type of transport. We also say that we set the alarm clock when we program the phone to ring at a certain time. There are no watches with that function on the nightstands anymore, but we still call the action the same. We don’t even turn the pages of an e-book or a PDF document, but we refer to that action with the same words.
As much as they want to impose the X on us, as long as this social network exists, the speakers will continue to call it with the derivatives that we have used up to now.
