Saturday, January 12, 2008

TXTing-lish

Earlier 2day k8t commented my lst pst. She said "...and ur pencil isn't moving."

"ur"?

Itz a word n the new language that ppl txt in. Itz lik english, but itz full of abbreviations.

N fact, Webopedia.com has an entire page devoted 2 "Text Messaging". Itz full of the abbreviations that txters use, the acronyms and emoticons that they use.

Lik "lol" and "kewl"; "neone" and "pls"; "probly" and "brb". (In English--and in order--those are "laugh out loud", "cool", "anyone", "please", "probably" and "be right back").

But my point is that txting has chnged the ntire english lnguage. Ppl rite n this shortened version of the lnguage. They lve out lttrs, n use numbrs 2 tak the plce of ltrs. They dnt capitalize lettrs.

N u dnt realize it ntil u start txtin a lot, but wen u do, u start ritin evrything u rite in this new language. N the thing is, ppl understand it. Skools dnt hav classes 2 teach the lnguage; theres no txtbook that has the vocab; but itz amazing--ppl get it. In fact, if uve evr txted b4, u probly totally understand evrythng i'm riting. N fact, evn if u haven't txted b4, u probly understand wut i'm sayin.

Which begs the ?--is there ne value 2 bein grammatically correct? Can i rite ne thing i wnt 2, w/out bein grammatically correct, n u'll understand?

Or--mayb txtin is ruining the english lnguage. R we dumbing dwn ppl by sending txt msgs that r written n this shrthand?

I no y ppl do it; they do it cuz they r tryin to sav time. Fone keypads only hav 10 keys-not enuf 4 the ntire alfabet. So fone designers put 3 ltrs on each key-which means that u havta punch the nums up 2 3 times 2 get the rite ltr (4 example, 2 type the word "nice", u'd havta type "6-4-4-4-2-2-2-3-3"). Obviously, it taks alot of keystrokes 2 get a sngle wrd n, so txters hav taken 2 shrtening their words.

Here's my thot on it: n an effort 2 b mor efficient, we mak our fones capable of snding the written word. But it taks 2 much time 2 rite grammatically correct, so ppl shrten the wrds. Agin, n an effort to b efficient.

The logical conclusion: the quest for efficiency often requires a substantial tradeoff-namely, in terms of accuracy. My question: is it worth it?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

lol u r so right dude ur #1. Keep up the good work!!!! U seem to kno the txt lang so well. id say u were a hardcore txtr.

Anonymous said...

Interesting isn't it? You can aosl jmulbe all of the mddlie ltteres and sltil be albe to usdrentnd ervey tinhg. Yuor mnid atouamitcllay fnihess the wrods for you by raeidng the fsrit lteter and the lsat.

SheGazelle said...

YUCK. I hated reading that post. It hurt my head! I text all the time, but I use the predictive text feature to increase speed- not this butchered version of the English language.
Wow...do I sound like an old person yet??
Just for good measure I'll lol.

Katie Booker said...

U R A ttl brt! Hw dre u make fun o me! i'll hv u knw i dnt txt like that....wll not rlly! Uve Alwys gotta b 1 up on me!


And..you forgot some
IMHO
JK
TTYL
TMI

Oh and if you're gonna abbreviate my name it should be KT!

Anonymous said...

Bravo! I love to read your blog because of the content and because it is one of the few sites I can count on to use proper spelling and punctuation. English grammer is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, I'm sorry to say. My head hurt when I finished reading the post today. Your point is well taken.

Anonymous said...

That was a pretty neat post...and I understood it all and have never texted anyone in my life! Great post! Keep it up...