I’d originally planned to do a whole rant about the inability of people to properly use language. Said rant was inspired by a couple of things: 1) the following deathless bit of cellphone conversation overheard one day on my walk to the subway:
I feel like I should take her to task for being so…jerky.
(My first thought was: why would you reprimand someone for having a seizure?)
and 2) the apparent inability of people to perceive the meanings of the words stop (it means cease people not roll slowly through the intersection while you look to see if there is a cop around) and don’t walk (I’m sorry but could it be more self-explanatory?).
I was going to do a rant about languages being organic and the ridculous lengths to which just plain lazy speakers have pushed that organic nature. Then, I read an article about text messaging on the BBC News web site. One photo used to illustrate this article was a shot of a cellphone screen with a text message on it. The photo caption read: Will text become a common language? The message on the screen: RUOK? CUL8R ATB
I weep for the future of human communications.
The nature of language tends towards shorter and less complicated. We can see that especially in English versus other languages in terms of fewer tenses etc etc. S’vernacular, ya know.
Interestingly, this becomes a class issue as well. Working class families speak a fiftieth (or much less) of the words that upper class families do, and this is projected dramatically onto their children. Not only do they speak fewer words, but they offer fewer encouragements throughout the child’s life. Children intrinsically have an enomorous amount of potential intelligence, but by the time they hit puberty this wears off. So by speaking less to them in the critical formative years you stunt their intellectual growth.
This cycle tends to perpetuate itself of course, and traps the working class. I mourn the death of proper English every day, but I also make sure my little brother speaks it well. Instead of just worrying why not volunteer for a literacy program? There aren’t any in my area, but I’m sure in DC you could find one. <:)
I agree: language does tend to simplify both as a language grows (and ages) and also as you move downward in the economic classes. Some of this is by nature; the daily human experience only encompasses a certain subset of what is available on the broad scale so that is the language we become most proficient at using. Change the experience, expand the language.
I’m not saying I don’t think text-language has its place. God knows I wouldn’t want to pay for two messages when I could abbreviate and pay for one. I’m also a heavy user of internet/e-mail-language. What frightens me is the idea that people will take an appropriate evolution of the living organism we call English (and I’m sure text language has developed for other languages as well) and take it out of its natural environment to a place where it isn’t appropriate. I just seems like another way to widen both the generation and wealth gaps to me. (After all, cellphones are not cheap.)