These quotations illustrate widely held anxieties about the effect of the Internet on language and languages. The first is the subheading of a magazine article on millennial issues. The second is the headline of an article on the rise of new forms of impoliteness in communication among people using the short messaging service on their mobile phones. The third is a remark from the President of France, Jacques Chirac, commenting on the impact of the Internet on language, and especially on French. My collection of press clippings has dozens more in similar vein, all with a focus on language. The authors are always ready to acknowledge the immense technological achievement, communicative power, and social potential of the Internet; but within a few lines their tone changes, as they express their concerns. It is a distinctive genre of worry. But unlike sociologists, political commentators, economists, and others who draw attention to the dangers of the Internet with respect to such matters as pornography, intellectual property rights, privacy, security, libel, and crime, these authors are worried primarily about linguistic issues. For them, it is language in general, and individual languages in particular, which are going to end up as Internet casualties, and their specific questions raise a profusion of spectres.