Thursday 11 April 2013

Texting Language vs. English Language

Can we even still spell?? Are social networks and instant messaging sites destroying English language??
Okay, before I proceed, let me just clear up on an issue I've been receiving tons of e-mails over. I have gotten a lot of messages telling/advising me to tone down my seeming onslaught on social networks and technology, I've replied a few and this should serve as a reply to some others: I am not 'beefing' technology, I'm merely stating certain wrongs that have become of us as a result of exposure or over-exposure as the case may be, to technology, 'beefing' technology is like fighting a war that I cannot win, I like to win wars, naturally.
Anyway, back to our topic, 'Text Language' or 'Chat slang' whichever you decide to regard it as, has obviously come to stay and is going nowhere, unfortunately for The English language.
Effectively, there's a whole new language being written, but that is not totally the fault of the writer per se, is it? Let's take twitter.com for example, any message you want to pass across has to be less than or equal to 140 characters, oh really?? In that case, who needs good English? There's an important message to be passed across here, English language can go to hell.
Also, you don't have all that time to go through the stress, strain and rigour of writing the word 'immediately' when you could simply shorten it to 'imidi8ly' and you'll still make your point, right? I mean, we are not in the 15th century, neither are we sharing language with the King James version of the holy bible. We need to go straight to the point, time is of the essence.
But, hold on a second, what happens when you have to write a formal letter seeking for employment? Or you need to write a proposal for a company that will make you lots of money?
*sigh*
You haven't thought of that now, have you? I didn't think so. There's an arguement that when the need for formal writing comes along, a person can easily switch but it's really easier said than done to convert an 'u' into a 'you' or a 'K' into an 'okay' especially if you are used to instant messaging and texting, which of course we all are. So how do we solve this massive problem and get back our English language? Do we even want back our English language? Do we even still regard English as 'our' language?
According to reports, these spellings are even cropping up in examination answer sheets, some of them, like slippery slime have found their ways into the webster's dictionary of English, words like 'LOL', 'WTF', 'OMG' and it's only a matter of time before 'ROTFLMAO' finds it's way in there too. Seriously though, texting language has come to stay and putting up an arguement against it is kind of like fighting a war against technology, you'll never win. We will definitely be wrong if we say texting language is a good thing, since it's wrong and we cannot stop it, the best bet will be to try to reduce it as much as we can, to the barest minimum.. And that's all I have to say about that, for now..

Till next time,, keep dreaming!!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

most cant help it.

Anonymous said...

We cant. Obviously. I was posted 2teach english at a secondary school.. Those students cannot write any word in full.

Anonymous said...

and neither can u.