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Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
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 Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 10:36 pm Post subject: Herald Tribune article on text messaging |
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From the International Herald Tribune ...
Texting shorthand annoys purists, but it has its charm
| Quote: |
If u cn rEd ths, ur doin gr8.
It is the newest variant of English, a compressed jumble of letters and numbers that has emerged in recent years as the language of the telephone text message.
Quick, inventive and utilitarian, it is a minimalist form of the language that some linguists call irrelevant and many schoolteachers say is an insult to its mother tongue.
But with more than a trillion text messages sent every year, showering the world with a confetti of tiny missives, it is impossible to ignore. Fatalists say there is no keeping Text Speak from insinuating itself into the language at large.
Texting is pure communication, pragmatic and terse, a facsimile of the sounds of English cut loose from the roots and history of the language.
It has produced its own vocabulary of acronyms, homonyms and abbreviations, things like LOL (laughing out loud) and CUL8R (see you later) that have, in their own context, become new English words.
It is a language driven by the young, a generation with the most agile thumbs in human history, whipping across the keyboard as they text. WYGOWM (will you go out with me). MTFBWY (may the force be with you). PU (this stinks). SUP (what's up).
The vocabulary of text messaging realizes an old lexicographical dream - attempted and failed at by luminaries like George Bernard Shaw - the realignment of spelling with sound.
No more rough, trough, thought, through - just ruf, trof, thot, thru. New conventions in spelling have emerged, like the use of a capital letter to denote a long vowel: ths is EzE to rEd.
The question is whether this new lingo is anything but a curiosity. "The Internet is changing everything from a linguistic point of view," said David Crystal, author of "English as a Global Language."
"There has never been so much written language in the world."
In what seemed a flight of fancy, Crystal described blogging - the unfiltered personal essays that are filling the Internet - as "the most amazing linguistic phenomenon there has ever been in the English language."
But in this vast universe, he called telephone text messaging "a very tiny, tiny thing, a variety of English that has evolved purely as a response to a technological restraint."
That restraint is the little screen on a mobile telephone, and Crystal said that is where texting would remain, thankfully leaving little imprint on the language at large.
But there is evidence that some spellings are leaking out into broader use. Last November, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, which sets standards for the testing of students, said phrases like 2B R NT 2B and I LUV U would be acceptable in exam papers.
Also late last year education officials in New Zealand said they might accept some abbreviations like WOT or WANNA or CUZ on examinations.
There was, of course, a backlash. Newspapers called the Scottish proposal ridiculous. In New Zealand, Judy Turner, a member of Parliament, put her objection in writing: "Skoolz r ther 2 educ8 + raze litracy 2 certn standrds."
But there is no pristine version of English that must be protected from alien incursions, said Denis Pyatt, principal of Papanui High School in Christchurch, New Zealand, who is a linguist.
"Text messaging is one of the more exciting developments of language that has occurred for a long time," Pyatt said in a telephone interview. "I think it's another wonderful example of how language grows, and it's another example of how language change cannot be stopped."
He added: "Given the global village we are now part of, the immediacy of all communications now and how quick it all is, I can't see how this would not influence the future of the language."
For those who don't want to be left behind, any English word or phrase can be instantly translated into Text Speak at www.transl8it.com.
"d qix brown fox jumped Ovr d lazy K9," for example.
Even the British Council, one of the arbiters of the international use of English, seems to be giving ground. Its Web site offers a lesson plan for Valentine's Day that lets students "create their own romantic text message in English."
This bastion of the Queen's English offered a couple of suggestions:
WUBMV, it said - Will you be my Valentine?
And xoxoxoxoxo - hugs and kisses. |
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