[Phillip Dyson]

This is an interesting thread. It actually reminded me of the time my cousin actually ridiculed me for using whole sentences and punctuation in my emails.

Luckily I never bowed to the peer pressure.

Someone earlier made mention of the great debate over teaching E-bonics in schools. It just goes to show that there are parts of the establishment that tend to give up when it comes to holding up the standard. Whatever it is.

Teaching E-bonics? No one who spoke it ever seemed to have any trouble with it.

As for the English language, as with many things in life, Natural Selection will decide what English will be in the future. Maybe it'll be "proper English" that survives. Maybe it'll be CitySpeak. Or QuickSpeak. Don't worry about communication, it'll continue. Though in what form, I cannot say.

I've often tried to take a checkpoint my perspectives on new things that pop up. In some cases I'm being intelligent. And in other cases I'm becoming the old generation that doesn't like the way the world is changing.

But for the record, my opinion about maintaining "proper" communication skills is me being intelligent. :wink:

[Phillip Dyson]

This is an interesting thread. It actually reminded me of the time my cousin actually ridiculed me for using whole sentences and punctuation in my emails.

Luckily I never bowed to the peer pressure.

Someone earlier made mention of the great debate over teaching E-bonics in schools. It just goes to show that there are parts of the establishment that tend to give up when it comes to holding up the standard. Whatever it is.

Teaching E-bonics? No one who spoke it ever seemed to have any trouble with it.

As for the English language, as with many things in life, Natural Selection will decide what English will be in the future. Maybe it'll be "proper English" that survives. Maybe it'll be CitySpeak. Or QuickSpeak. Don't worry about communication, it'll continue. Though in what form, I cannot say.

I've often tried to take a checkpoint my perspectives on new things that pop up. In some cases I'm being intelligent. And in other cases I'm becoming the old generation that doesn't like the way the world is changing.

But for the record, my opinion about maintaining "proper" communication skills is me being intelligent. :wink:

[Steve Jordan]

One thing history has shown us is the fact that, if a new abbreviation, contraction, misspelling, etc. of a word is used often enough, it eventually gets put into the official lexicon, and soon it's okay for everyone to use it. I'm sure that some (probably not all) of the IM abbreviations, idioms, etc., will eventually end up as an acceptable part of the English language.

On the other hand, a lot of this is directly caused by limited keyboards. If IM devices (including cell phones) ever crack the "speech to text" problem, this issue will magically go away. So, if you want to stop the progression of IM-isms from entering the lexicon, get cracking on that speech-to-text thing!

[Cybrid]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

On the other hand, a lot of this is directly caused by limited keyboards. If IM devices (including cell phones) ever crack the "speech to text" problem, this issue will magically go away. So, if you want to stop the progression of IM-isms from entering the lexicon, get cracking on that speech-to-text thing!

Foshizzle ma nizzle. Y' tink dat gonna solve any o' dis here problem? Naw, spoken English is even more disjointed and or otherwise prone to silliness.

[Jon Westfall]

Originally Posted by bcries

From the original post:

I hate to be contrary, but either you have received essays from one individual named college freshman (hence your omission of the article "a"), or you have received essays from several college freshmen. Naturally your error is the small kind that could easily be caused by a mere typo, but I cannot help but point out the humour in failed object number-agreement appearing in a post about linguistic standards. :mrgreen:

"college freshman" was meant to be a generic name for any individual who was in college and submitted a paper to me using those spellings. I'm sure many of my offenders had more than one year in the college game and were still doing this. :mrgreen:

[Jon Westfall]

Originally Posted by bcries

Seriously though, I think that the evolution of the PC interface has led to a lower emphasis on developing typing skills among schoolchildren; the most exciting computing experiences are entirely mouse-based. I type in a manner similar to how I would speak because I was told to use Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing software as a child. Now my top speed is pushing 80 WPM. I could never imagine wanting to type "b4" because typing "before" takes me no longer... but I suspect that, sadly, the same cannot be said for the many hopeless touch-typists in my generation (I'm 23).

I have noticed, however, that I get a kind of "un-cool" feeling when using whole words and sentences to send instant messages to friends (especially those who typ lik dis ok? brb ttyl l8r). I end up feeling like John Hodgman on the "Hi, I'm a Mac / and I'm a PC" commercials; soon, I get absorbed into the teen chat shorthand language. Whether or not you think language should be descriptive, it seems inevitable that new media will beg for corresponding genres - IM being a good example thereof. Perhaps the future challenge will not be to integrate IM language into traditional correspondence, but rather to teach complex and differing sets of parlance for each medium as appropriate.

Being:
(A) 23 Years Old
(B) An 80+ WPM Touch Typist
(C) Inundated with IM friends who insist on spelling like yours

... I feel your pain.

Do what I do, just mock the heck out of your friends until they spell better. Might not do wonders for the friendship, but you won't feel uncool and you won't have to decipher either.

[Jon Westfall]

Originally Posted by Phillip Dyson

This is an interesting thread. It actually reminded me of the time my cousin actually ridiculed me for using whole sentences and punctuation in my emails.

Luckily I never bowed to the peer pressure.

Never Give In.

Your post did remind me of one good point about this whole issue - it prevents people from impersonating each other easily. Case and point? My friend's girlfriend never uses punctuation in her text messages or IMs. She doesn't capatalize either. An apostrophe is a foreign object to her as well. So when her sister and mother took over the computer while she was away and started IMing my friend, he quickly figured out that it wasn't her!

[redraiduzz]

although I'm sometimes guilty of that type of "bastardized shorthand," I do feel -- and languish -- that the language is desecrated and butchered and ultimately threatened long term!

[heliod]

The text posted by Jon seems like a part of the multi-phase plan for creating a new all-european language based on English, which I received some time ago:

European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.

Now seriously, this is happening in all languages. I happen to know English, Portuguese, Spanish and Hebrew, and since the advent of SMS and IM it is happening in all of them, and I am sure that also in others. As the owner of a business, sometimes I get resumes written this way! It makes me crazy, since there is no way to differentiate a computer genius from a child.

I keep trying to write, even in SMS and IM, with the regular languages I know.... but I am afraid that some time from now people will not understand me anymore.

[natestera]

Quote from Dicken's Tale of Two Cities...Mr. Cruncher to Miss Pross in chapter 14...

"Would you do me the favour, miss, to take notice o' two promises and wows wot it is my wishes fur to record in this here crisis?"

I like spikey headed, corpse-stealing Mr. Cruncher, and his manner o' speakin by the way, and so did Dickens. Oh, and I also use the word "ain't". Note to the English Professors in this thread...save the kings english for your classroom, because most of the real world doesn't use it...

[Steve Jordan]

Originally Posted by Cybrid

Foshizzle ma nizzle. Y' tink dat gonna solve any o' dis here problem? Naw, spoken English is even more disjointed and or otherwise prone to silliness.

We're talking about IM shorthand, not slang, here. But you prove my point: Although a lot of the slang you just used isn't "accepted" English yet, the words "gonna" and "o'" already are.

Dig?