Text speak

[Booldawg]

I'm of the opinion that text talk (m8, ur, lol) will one day be the accepted way of writing English language as all the younger generation spell words this way. 100s of years ago alot of words were spelt differently, commonly they had e's on the end of things (dogge, inne) where we dont today - obviously dropped by laziness, shocking at the time but stuck and became the accepted spelling.

Can anybody else see this happening? I'm certainly hoping that with schools teaching children to spell properly may combat this.

[Tatsbabe]

This is an issue which I have looked into pretty thoroughly as one of the modules on my degree was Language and Technology.

Through the research I did, I found that an amazing number of people, young and old, did NOT think that this was going to happen eventually. It came out at around 87%. The funny thing is that almost exactly the same percentage of people actually use text talk with roughly 50% admitting to using it in other situations other than just texting.

I don't think that Standard English will be eclipsed by text speak and personally I hate it when I come across it anywhere else but on my mobile! Having said that, being a huge fan of all things linguistic, I find it a fascinating new twist to our most adaptable language!

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that I wholely agree with your comment regarding schools teaching children to spell properly (check Yahoo Answers UK if you need any examples!).

If I had to pick out one feature of the English Language as my favourite, it would be its unpredictability so I guess we will just have to wait and see!

[Booldawg]

ty m8. only joking, personally I hate text speak and wont even use it on my mobile, on the internet or anywhere. But its nice that people like yourself are keeping tabs on it.

[serendipity1]

well txt talk has indeed made me very lazy espesh when skyping i find myself doing it.

[flip-flop]

God I do hope not - not answer to the question, but I thought I'd share it with you anyway.........my brother-in-law has a small business and last year was interviewing for a school leaver for some office junior work and (you know what I'm going to say here) recevied a CV that had text speak - which was mixed with English: it looked awful and, quite rightly, the person wasn't offerred an interview.

It just beggarded belief - what thought process went through this persons mind when preparing their CV?

[Booldawg]

thats the trouble flip-flop. People are thinking that it's perfectly acceptable to spell in this way.

[mike42]

there was a study done on this i heard on the radio and sadly this is alredy happening.lol.

[pinksmartie]

I don't think so. I'm in year 10 and can write perfectly well, even though I use msn almost every day.

I'd much rather send one text full of shortened words and abbreviations than have to spend about 50p on a text with full words and fantastic sentence structure.

[THECORBYLOON]

If you want to spell properly, you should know "alot," as in "alot of," is written as two words .

[JanineG]

I agree with you Booldawg - it's very worrying. I seem to remember a big fuss a few years ago because so many GCSE students had answered their exams in text speak - I just couldn't believe it - what shocked me wasn't so much that it was natural to them to do that, but that they thought it would be sufficient to pass a GCSE (in English Language!)

[lankeela]

But don't they have to know how to spell the words correctly in the first place to shorten them or else they would not know what to write (if you see what I mean).
L8r.