Tho did have to take an hour out to watch queer eye /nodBest CNN article ever.
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Took a CNN report for me to figure out what "leet" means 
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Angelsheart
- Posts: 1470
- Joined: Tue 10 Aug, 2004 12:06 am
Is txt mightier than the word?
Is text messaging infecting or liberating the English language? Judge for yourself, as we rewrite classic texts in txt.
When a 13-year-old Scottish girl handed in an essay written in text message shorthand, she explained to her flabbergasted teacher that it was easier than standard English.
She wrote: "My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kids FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc." (In translation: "My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three screaming kids face to face. I love New York. It's a great place.")
The girl's teacher - who asked not to be named - was not impressed, saying: "I could not believe what I was seeing. The page was riddled with hieroglyphics, many of which I simply could not translate."
Text messaging, e-mail and computer spell-checks have long been blamed for declining standards of spelling and grammar. A publisher of a new dictionary warned last Friday of a "degree of crisis" in university students' written English.
"pRting is sch swEt srw"
Despite the advent of predictive text, which completes words as you write them, and even the launch of next generation mobile networks, it seems that the simple texting skills people have learnt in the last three or four years will be around for a while yet.
But could the anonymous Scottish schoolgirl be right? Could txt take over more of our expression because addicts simply find it easier than normal writing? And could this mean the liberation of our use of language?
Already, text message shortcuts have been adopted by those keen to get their point across in as little space as possible, be it advertising copy, poetry or Biblical passages.
Even Shakespeare - famously inconsistent in his own spelling - might succumb. Is it a great travesty to render his more famous passages in text message shorthand?
2b or not 2b thats ?
a @(---`---`--- by any otha name wd sml swEt
rm rm w4Ru rm?
1nc mr un2 T brech dr frnds 1nc mr
The Lord's Prayer, for instance, could be thought of as somewhat stuffy even in its updated version, so the satirical Christian online magazine Ship of Fools ran a competition to rewrite it in 160 characters or less - the length of a mobile phone text message.
The winner, Matthew Campbell of York University, condensed it thus: "dad@hvn, ur spshl. we want wot u want &urth2b like hvn. giv us food & 4giv r sins lyk we 4giv uvaz. don't test us! save us! bcos we kno ur boss, ur tuf & ur cool 4 eva! ok?"
It may be just a coincidence, but when invited to pick a classic text to read together for World Book Day this Thursday, BBC News Online readers voted for the slimmest volume on the list - Heart of Darkness, a dark but short read at a mere 96 pages.
Click here to join our book group
Rewritten in txt, Joseph Conrad's tome would be shorter still. Its opening line "The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest" might be condensed to "T Neli, a crzng yal, swng 2 hr anchr wout a fluta of T sails and was @ rest."
Surely such treatment would make epics such as Tolstoy's War and Peace - at present a whooping 1,400+ pages - into a handy pocket-sized read.
But linguistics expert Dr Joan Beal doubts such a tome will grace the nation's bookshelves any time soon. "The only books I can envisage written in text message shorthand would be aimed at the teenage market, if at all. For it would rather spoil the pleasure of reading, having to work out all those abbreviations."
Is text messaging infecting or liberating the English language? Judge for yourself, as we rewrite classic texts in txt.
When a 13-year-old Scottish girl handed in an essay written in text message shorthand, she explained to her flabbergasted teacher that it was easier than standard English.
She wrote: "My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kids FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc." (In translation: "My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three screaming kids face to face. I love New York. It's a great place.")
The girl's teacher - who asked not to be named - was not impressed, saying: "I could not believe what I was seeing. The page was riddled with hieroglyphics, many of which I simply could not translate."
Text messaging, e-mail and computer spell-checks have long been blamed for declining standards of spelling and grammar. A publisher of a new dictionary warned last Friday of a "degree of crisis" in university students' written English.
"pRting is sch swEt srw"
Despite the advent of predictive text, which completes words as you write them, and even the launch of next generation mobile networks, it seems that the simple texting skills people have learnt in the last three or four years will be around for a while yet.
But could the anonymous Scottish schoolgirl be right? Could txt take over more of our expression because addicts simply find it easier than normal writing? And could this mean the liberation of our use of language?
Already, text message shortcuts have been adopted by those keen to get their point across in as little space as possible, be it advertising copy, poetry or Biblical passages.
Even Shakespeare - famously inconsistent in his own spelling - might succumb. Is it a great travesty to render his more famous passages in text message shorthand?
2b or not 2b thats ?
a @(---`---`--- by any otha name wd sml swEt
rm rm w4Ru rm?
1nc mr un2 T brech dr frnds 1nc mr
The Lord's Prayer, for instance, could be thought of as somewhat stuffy even in its updated version, so the satirical Christian online magazine Ship of Fools ran a competition to rewrite it in 160 characters or less - the length of a mobile phone text message.
The winner, Matthew Campbell of York University, condensed it thus: "dad@hvn, ur spshl. we want wot u want &urth2b like hvn. giv us food & 4giv r sins lyk we 4giv uvaz. don't test us! save us! bcos we kno ur boss, ur tuf & ur cool 4 eva! ok?"
It may be just a coincidence, but when invited to pick a classic text to read together for World Book Day this Thursday, BBC News Online readers voted for the slimmest volume on the list - Heart of Darkness, a dark but short read at a mere 96 pages.
Click here to join our book group
Rewritten in txt, Joseph Conrad's tome would be shorter still. Its opening line "The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest" might be condensed to "T Neli, a crzng yal, swng 2 hr anchr wout a fluta of T sails and was @ rest."
Surely such treatment would make epics such as Tolstoy's War and Peace - at present a whooping 1,400+ pages - into a handy pocket-sized read.
But linguistics expert Dr Joan Beal doubts such a tome will grace the nation's bookshelves any time soon. "The only books I can envisage written in text message shorthand would be aimed at the teenage market, if at all. For it would rather spoil the pleasure of reading, having to work out all those abbreviations."
Personally, I'll take the 1337 inanity over the txt stupidity. I'm with the teacher on that one. I wouldn't even ask what was going on with the page of assinine blobs of letters. She should have just been given a 0 on it and leave it at that. If the student questions it, explain to them that their parents shouldn't have conceived them on top of a running malfunctioning microwave. My grammar's far from perfect but it's one of those things that goes up sideways when people butcher it. Bitterness left over from when I had to use a typewriter to do 10 page reports and one wrong key meant you did the page again since the teacher wouldn't accept pages with erase smudges.
College students who fail miserably at their native language? If they're that dismal, should they have been accepted? Isn't this why there are standardized tests to avoid tossing someone a scholarship who can barely write their name in the mud with a stick? Haven't done much serious reading for years, but shorthanding classic literature = foot up ass till coughing up shoelaces.
Old roomate used to live though his text pager and never once did I come across anything "txt"-y. Just another reason why people who can't speak shouldn't be allowed to type. And then there are long-winded blowhards like me who people wish would abbreviate, condense, and shut up. You'll get your wish.. for now.
Edit #1: Spelling /snicker
College students who fail miserably at their native language? If they're that dismal, should they have been accepted? Isn't this why there are standardized tests to avoid tossing someone a scholarship who can barely write their name in the mud with a stick? Haven't done much serious reading for years, but shorthanding classic literature = foot up ass till coughing up shoelaces.
Old roomate used to live though his text pager and never once did I come across anything "txt"-y. Just another reason why people who can't speak shouldn't be allowed to type. And then there are long-winded blowhards like me who people wish would abbreviate, condense, and shut up. You'll get your wish.. for now.
Edit #1: Spelling /snicker
"There's no preparation and no guide, just what you've done before here with your life." -BR
I can (mostly) decipher "1337", but that "txt" nonsense is crap. Even in texting, like the article says, predictive text gives you no reason to not use full words. The only time I abbreviate a text is if what I want to say won't fit in the alloted spaces. And then I tend to shorten sentences rather than words.
The next generation's apparent lack of spelling & grammar, and also their distinct failure to understand why the degradation of the language is such a sad & unfortunate thing, is quite frankly scary. How can we expect them to uphold the language when they fail to understand why it's necessary?
The next generation's apparent lack of spelling & grammar, and also their distinct failure to understand why the degradation of the language is such a sad & unfortunate thing, is quite frankly scary. How can we expect them to uphold the language when they fail to understand why it's necessary?
Maybe it is the development of a new dialect?Sianni wrote:The next generation's apparent lack of spelling & grammar, and also their distinct failure to understand why the degradation of the language is such a sad & unfortunate thing, is quite frankly scary. How can we expect them to uphold the language when they fail to understand why it's necessary?
Or maybe it is just kids wanting to have their own language their parents cant understand?
Or maybe it is part of a conspiracy to move language away from English making all the old archives of information inaccessible to these people therefore creating a big information divide between the haves and have nots?
Or maybe I should just get back to work. ;)
Mynxi
As an inveterate reader and an absolute devourer of the written word, my appreciation of the emotions and colours of language are reasonably well developed.
How can one express the shadings of meaning, the sublime measure of a well written paragraph or two, with something that resembles a drunken spider that fell into a puddle of ink and staggered inebriated, across the pristine fecundity of a sheet of paper?
The many and varied nuances of a perfectly structured and lucid piece of descriptive prose would lie tattered and desolate under the rough shod heel of the vast illiterati.
Imagine, if you will, the many times you have completely misunderstood the meaning a writer has attempted to convey in a piece of text. I am generalising here, but on the majority of occassions, the fault has been in the use of the descriptors, or adjectives. Now, imagine again the likelihood of misunderstanding if there are no adjectives. Not only would this be an absolute minefield for potentially disastrous misapprehensions, but the sheer beauty, joy and pleasure of the image the written word is building would be annihlated.
How can one express the shadings of meaning, the sublime measure of a well written paragraph or two, with something that resembles a drunken spider that fell into a puddle of ink and staggered inebriated, across the pristine fecundity of a sheet of paper?
The many and varied nuances of a perfectly structured and lucid piece of descriptive prose would lie tattered and desolate under the rough shod heel of the vast illiterati.
Imagine, if you will, the many times you have completely misunderstood the meaning a writer has attempted to convey in a piece of text. I am generalising here, but on the majority of occassions, the fault has been in the use of the descriptors, or adjectives. Now, imagine again the likelihood of misunderstanding if there are no adjectives. Not only would this be an absolute minefield for potentially disastrous misapprehensions, but the sheer beauty, joy and pleasure of the image the written word is building would be annihlated.
Miruwin
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
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