Corruption or bastardisation is a way of referring to certain changes in a language. The most common way that a word can be said to be corrupted is the change of its spelling through errors and gradual changes in comprehension, transcription, and hearing. This is especially common with words borrowed from another language. For example Guangzhou was formerly known as "Canton" in English, which is a transliteration of Guangdong following the rules of French sound structures. The terms "corruption" and "bastardisation" are rooted in prescriptivist theories of language.
Language corruption may refer to two similar things:
Text bastardisation is:
| “ | A year after rejecting the novel, Gallimard published a bastardised text called Ravages, which dispensed with the first, sexually explicit pages of the manuscript. | „ |
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In the past, with unstandardized spelling for English and other languages, a word would be pronounced differently by people who encountered the word in text and not speech. Eventually, such changes could become standardized. A large number of these changes occurred during the 19th century. English is now highly standardized with some dialectal variation.
The mass written communication of the Internet promotes even greater standardization; however, its informal nature often encourages intentional language changes. In online interactive games, chat rooms and other situations, common typographical errors and attempts at humor have created a number of new alternate spellings (see leet).
Some commonly known words and phrases which are the result of linguistic corruption include:
  | The Mavens' Word of the Day (for July 11, 2000) - The Mavens' Word of the Day |
| | Among the Cybercajuns: Constructing Identity in the Virtual Diaspora - JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie |
| | Spitten image : Etymythology and Fluid Dynamics - Project MUSE - American Speech - Spitten image : Etymythology and Fluid Dynamics |
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