Dear English...We Miss You...
"Yo, wt u up2 ds dys m doin fyne gtngalng k. stdyn n wrkn @ é sm tym i mzz al d odr ppl hu v wr n cls with hw r dey doin.gd i hpe. lol."
So...that is an example of the text messages I get from friends. Well, thats an interesting use of the language, to say the least. I've heard of short-hand but this really takes the cake. I mean, seriously, what on earth is wrong with people nowadays. I have nothing against writing in short-hand or in shortened form, i do so myself. But stuff like this really gets under my skin. So many people all over the place suffer from what I like to call, SVDS (Severe Vowel Deficiency Syndrome). I mean seriously, whats so wrong with vowels? Trust me, once you get to know them, they're actually nice people, vowels. All they really want is to be accepted.
Another thing is IMspeak, where one tends to use those magnificent abbreviations coined by the great elder ones of MSN Messenger...Oh wait, I apologize, Its WindowsLive™Messenger now. Ok, so i guess I cant really come down on abbreviations like LoL (laugh out loud), RoFL (Rolling on the Floor Laughing), LMAO (Laughing my ass off) and LMFAO (basically LMAO plus one extra word that starts with an 'F', the difference being that LMFAO is probably more, well, intense? Maybe? But man, you need a dictionary to understand the myriad of IMspeak terms out there.
Oh yeah, what about those words that are spelled wrong for no apparent reason. What comes to mind is a very good friend of mine, salt of the earth and all but for some reason he spells cool as 'kewl'. (If you're reading this I apologize, but at least I didn't mention your name.) This problem I've noticed all over the place. Why, whats wrong with cool? It consists of four letters, and so is kewl. So whats the reason for using 'kewl'. I've noticed so many people go around misspelling words, deliberately. And I can't for the life of me fathom why.
Oh well, this is just what I think. I do shorten-words occasionally but not to the level where whoever it is that I'm talking to needs some sort of complex high-level decoder to try and figure out what the hell it is I'm trying to say. So many times, all such messages to me, have ended up with me replying with 'Huh?' and then the person having to then re-explain the message to me, simply cause I can't figure out some word or phrase or sentence in the message. Oh well, to try and find something positive, at least it gives my mind a workout. Move over sudoku, get lost chess, here comes freestyle SMSUnderstand™®.
Personally I think that everybody should just get back to using good, normal COMPLETE English. With out screwing around with grammar, spelling and punctuation. I.e. when it comes to using the English language, use it properly and in the right context and stop being so fewlish...
(p.s. for those scratching their heads over the picture at the start of the post. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic )
Hi Priya,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this post very much and while I do agree with Mr. Random mouth theorist that people should just get back to using good, normal and complete English, I do see why some people simply don't.
Before I go on, let me just say that I'm guilty of doing some of the fewlish things he mentioned. It was a time of mIRC and ICQ some ten years back and I have made my share of "friends" through those networks. I didn't use words like "frenzzz" or "harloezzz" but I did make it a point to mis-spell words the way the author's friend did (I found it amusing).
While the mis-spelling of words simply cannot be justified, the use of abbreviations on cyberspace can prove to be so useful.
Some years back my friends and I got hooked onto this game where heroes battled each other on 3 lanes or corridors. The good owned a side and the bad owned the other. The objective of the game was to infiltrate and defeat the throne (good or bad). While I was still a "newbie", I was stumped by what my team members typed to me.
"mid ms"
"btm care"
"btm b"
"bs!"
"btm b now!!"
My hero died before I could type "huh?"
There were links between the 3 lanes so heroes could go the long way round to "backstab" some other hero. What was being said was,
"mid missing"
"bottom care"
"bottom back"
"backstab!"
"bottom back now!!"
I learnt that the hard way. What I'm trying to say here is, that's some rather effective communication- It could've saved my life!
honestly,im ok with shorten forms too cos in a way its convenient but then some people just go for extreme. Like the very first example. I needed a good amount of time to figure out what the message meant! But, I still dont understand some parts to this
ReplyDelete"i mzz al d odr ppl hu v wr n cls with hw r dey doin"?
is it like
"I miss all the other people who ____ with how are they doing"
Also I had no idea about the shorten forms you had included. I couldnt figure out then i read on and i realized what the shorten form meant!