DA FRE INTERN3T IS ON TEH V3RGA OF DESTRUCTION AND SO IS DA ENGLISH LANGUAEG!!11111 WTF LOL I DONT T3XT M3SAEG I DONT INSTANT MESAEG AND I DONT UNDERSTAND DA ABR3VIAETD FORMS USED IN SUCH11!!11 OMG LOL AND I REFUS3 2 L3ARN!!1111
The above is a translation of the following, according to “the aol translator.”
The free Internet is on the verge of destruction, and so is the English language. I don’t text message, I don’t instant message, and I don’t understand the abbreviated forms used in such. And I refuse to learn.
After reading this article in the online edition of the Chicago Maroon (thanks to b!X for the link, even though I know he disagrees with my position on language), I decided to try and find out just how out of touch I was with the netlingo.
While plenty of commenters disagreed with the Maroon piece, I’m not one of them. I particularly appreciate this part of the article:
Language is precious, and being able to express oneself through writing, even in something as apparently trivial as an e-mail, is vital. AOL-speak strips all the beauty and nuance out of written language, converting it to a means rather than its own end, shifting the emphasis from quality of self-expression and communication to sheer speed, efficiency, and volume of dispatches. Personal communication used to mean something; people took time in the composition of correspondence and invested something of themselves in it. Now, however, cookie-cutter abbreviations have overrun the realm of language, leaving it a bleak, monosyllabic wasteland.
Of course I agree with that quote. I was, after all and English major and and English teacher. Although, in actuality, I really don’t care if netspeak is used when and where appropriate, as long as schools continue to teach the English language at its more eloquent. Back in October of 2004, I posted something related to Ebonics as a result of the more than two dozen comments I got on a post I made on a totally different subject.
I guess there’s something about me that just doesn’t like lazy language. (Obviously I DO like alliteration.)
Some interesting quotes about “language:”
Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs. — Jack Lynch
We learn what we have said from those who listen to our speaking. — Kenneth Patton
The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language. — J. Michael Straczynski:
Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow. — Oliver Wendell Holmes
Language is the dress of thought. — Samuel Johnson
A different language is a different vision of life. — Federico Fellini