Researchers: written English language will weather LOL storm
I really just linked to this for the great headline.
Teenagers may be widely characterized as the most prominent abusers of “IM speak,” but it turns out that they don’t use it as much as we think—and it’s not hurting their language skills either.
I’m curious to see if IM-/SMS-speak has really just been a temporary result of limited technology. I tried typing a text message on a regular (non-“smart”) phone, and it took me a half hour because I used proper grammer. Misspellings and abbreviations are required for timely communication on dumbphones.
But on the iPhone, misspelling or abbreviating a word often takes more time and effort than writing it correctly. Once they’re more commonplace (and they will be), we’ll see a huge reduction in SMS-speak. The English language has far more to fear from our awful education standards than SMS.
As another example, technology limits me from expressing detailed facial expressions in plaintext media, so I’m stuck with :) and :(. That’s not going to stop me from using other facial expressions in real life.
I disagree. I think efficient typing will remain rooted in younger culture and will become even more difficult to understand. It’s not like this phenomenon appeared when cell phones first hit the market. It started when people were using the same old Qwerty keyboards they’re using now.
Read the book “The Unfolding of Language” it talks about the evolution of languages throughout the world and how words naturally become shorter and more efficient.
Need proof? If you walk around London these days and ask people to say “think,” you might hear “fink.” The term “innit” is also used instead of “isn’t it.” They started out as slang terms, or as features of an accent, but are quickly growing to become commonly accepted. This is the English language evolving before our very eyes.
Methods to communicate as efficiently as possible will continue to evolve as well.
