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210 Comments
- soogy, on 10/12/2007, -7/+66Man, I feel like punching people who can't put together coherent sentences.
Some people are misunderstanding this article. Saying things like QFT, lol, etc. is fine. But when people can't even put together a sentence without a grammar or spelling error, something is seriously wrong.
For example:
"there soo dum lol i got2 get 1 4 ma boiz lool" - EmileVictor, on 10/12/2007, -18/+72I've noticed that girls seem to be the ones that embrace this lingo the most. In all, maybe guys who use the internet may use it in small doses - lol, wtf, etc. Those are fine, in my eyes - because they don't usually make a conversation difficult to follow. However, some girls in particular take it overboard. Here's an excerpt from one girls blog:
"well last saturday i have my mums sprizzy b'day party yay so fun then monday i had a random food thing wif friends we walked from red roster then hunrgy jack then kfc then maccas n yeah that was funny n fun ^_^ then tueday i didn't have 2 go 2 piano lesson because me n aron went 2 go get 2 chickens from coles just down the road n they had NO CHICKENS ah! so we got pasta n chips n i got 2 see chariles :D n yeah we did somethin eles but i can't rember but anywho but 2 my week wensday um i can't rember wat i did but i no it was fun well anyways thurday i don't think i didn't anythin".
The title of a similarly disturbing blog post:
" reasons why i want mi life to b lyk an audrey hepburn film"
I hope you get my point. I agree with the article in its entirety. Internet lingo, when overdone is extremely counterproductive and is actually starting to waste people's time instead of saving it.
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http://www.mediahug.com/ - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -13/+42Thats just australian girls in general. And remove your stupid spammy link you prat!
- kalphegor, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/7397/plm7ve.jpg
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21emile, it's definitely not just girls. some guys are JUST as bad.
but yeah, for girls it has pretty much become an accepted form of writing. goto myspace and try to read anything made in comments, it's impossible to read.
especially when they use capitilization like this: iM tyPInG lIkE a ***** rEtArD
and i also agree that there is nothing wrong with abbreviating and shortening words (common practice in business even before aol existed) but it has gotten to the point where it can't any longer be called English. - Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18I suggest, and by that I mean put forth unto the public at large, and this forum in particular, a reactionary superfluity of verbiage to mitigate the excess diminution and compaction of language as exemplified by the typical America On-Line (AOL) user's truncated and overly abbreviated vocabulary. We can, by our grandiloquent writing, show yet the opposite extreme, a style similar and not unlike the common beaurocratic dialects which have arisen from legal jargon dating back to Charlemagne or earlier. Certain personages, being themselves in a position that historically demanded highly cultured and refined individuals of elevated education, but yet lacking the advantages of their predecessors, found themselves cast into a role which required the appearance of a leisurely and productive liberal education. Being surrounded with the literary trappings thereof, they adopted a stilted mode of communication which displayed outwardly the form of refined speech and lexicographical erudition, but not having the advantage of the entire dimension of a classical education, including lengthy readings of various famed and noted writers of antiquity, they assembled from the awkward union of their poorly disciplined minds and rote exemplary fragments a narrative which attempted to convey a sense of understanding above their capabilities. Hence, this paragraph, and I present it to you as a timely contrarian model of communication, etc., etc. I remain your humble servant, Urusai.
- syberghost, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18What does "pterodactyl" have to do with simplifying English? It's Latin. It's a little late to be simplifying Latin.
- parker, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16i majored in english literature and now i'm an esl teacher. maybe that makes me qualified... anyway, it's about communication, not grammar.
1) some online sentences are so filled with acronyms and other lingo that they are hard to understand.
2) when you type 'lol' are you really laughing out loud? are they majority of your thoughts and feelings summed up exactly by im speech? i hope not! by removing metaphors and even adjectives from the dialogue it does devolve. where's the wit? i'm not saying that im talk has to be great literature but by resorting to push-button responses to situations you are making yourself look like a soulless robot incapable of independent thought. - koweja, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18You can't even blame AOL, or any other company, for how people type. It is the fault of the specific users that type that way and the communities that have accepted it.
- soogy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14Easier would be simplifying English grammar and pronunciation rules. Anyone who was asked to spell "pterodactyl" in first grade knows what I'm talking about. The hell is a puh-terro-dac-tile?
Easier is not making everything three letters long. - mattcoady, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14It all has to be put into context. I for one do not use the AOL-speak, but it doesn't bother me when others do, in the IM environment. Its sometimes hard to keep your typing speed up to the pace of human speach and if you're trying to have a diologue style conversation over a messenger client, you have to cut corners.
IM chats were never ment to be deeply personal, in the same way written letters would be, so why argue the point of trying to achieve that. The young generation just needs to be taught where to use such language and where to use proper english.
Is email a step down from snail mail?
Are automobiles a step down from horses?
etc...
Not only that, but we aren't far away from ditching the typed messages in favor of spoken messages, so I wouldn't worry about this putting an end to the human race as we know it. - sinfony, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11How clever. The judicious use of fragments is perfectly fine in English.
Honestly, we need look no farther than the front page of Digg to see that the language is being abused, and not in a way that makes it more efficient: the rampant misuse of apostrophes makes the language more confusing than it already is. It's important that people be able to communicate complex ideas in writing because; kids who grow up typing gr8 are falling behind in that respect. - Khlept0, on 10/12/2007, -9/+19*lazy bastards
- Daniel591992, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I agree, you can't blame a company, blame the people! I used to write leik tis, but now, I changed. Sure, I use lol, and brb. It's just easier. But some people use 2 letter words to replace 3 letter words. That's just too much. Even more anoying is
p30p|3 wh0 7h1nk 7h3y 4r3 4|| |337 n' 57uff - XxN3RDC0R3xX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9There are kids in my English class who still write essays using "u" and "ur" and stuff (I'm in tenth grade).
- mark1372, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Are you REALLY laughing out loud?
- darkyoshi, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14Um... 24th to the 28th is five days.
- MinnesotaTwins, on 10/12/2007, -11/+19Or you could look at the bright side and say AOL speak is preventing carpal tunnel syndrome by making us type less.
- musicbear, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7...leet speek has ruined the english language? uh... duh... but this will be on VH1's I Love THE 06's... sometime in the future... remember when we used to do that lame ass leet speak? I had to stop it when I realized I couldn't get into college or get a job and everyone thought I had a bad head injury and that's why I wrote like that...
- runningnick, on 10/12/2007, -2/+91. There are different registers of English. The language used in an essay for your doctoral thesis, the language used in an instruction manual, the language used in a job interview, the language used in casual conversation, and the language used in text messaging all belong to different registers.
Some people don't grasp this concept. They point out grammatical mistakes in digg comments, which clearly do not belong to the same register as a dissertation.
2. Language changes, sometimes transparently. Consider the follow two sentences. Which is correct?
A. The swimmer dove into the water.
B. The swimmer dived into the water.
Believe it or not, (B) is the historically correct answer. But after the prescriptivist grammarians such as John Lowth of the late 1700s, people became very concerned about the proper ways of speaking. They hypercorrected, turning a weak verb ("dived") into a strong one ("dove") because it sounded more "correct."
Those prescriptivists are the same idiots who came up with the idea that you can't have two negatives in a sentence or that you can't split infinitives. Historically, English had no such rules, which is why we struggle to adhere to them.
In the end, the only thing that matters is whether or not we can communicate with one another. - mark1372, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Your comma should be a semicolon. :-P
- drizek, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11 "by resorting to push-button responses to situations you are making yourself look like a soulless robot incapable of independent thought."
Isnt that true of most people though? - chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I have to say, I've used the Internet for quite some time- and I don't use "chat speak". Sure, I use common abbreviations of small sentences like "brb", but I always use proper punctuation and grammar when at all possible. They haven't destroyed the English language (since most people do have a strong distinction between Internet speak and speaking to someone/ writing essays etc) Basically, this is just another case of attacking AOL- not that we need another reason to hate them.
Edit: I'm 16, which is pertinent I think. - bairy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6AOL - for those who don't know better.
AOL translator: http://ssshotaru.homestead.com/files/aolertranslator.html - Aolus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Oh, because everyone wrote proper English when passing notes in class pre-AIM days....
- Anamith, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Doubleplusundigg.
- deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5English is a hode podge language that has evolved from dozens of other languages. If anything "AIM speak" just shows you how amazing English is. You can twist it with slang and forgien words and most people can still understand it.
- kiph, on 04/20/2009, -0/+5As long as it's used in the appropriate environment, I don't see what the big deal is. If someone uses "Internet acronyms" in, say, an essay they are writing for a class, it is the teacher's responsibility to teach the student that it is wrong. The same goes a parent who teaches their teenage son or daughter that using profanity in certain situations is wrong. Sure, arguments can be made that it is always wrong, but like it or not, profanity is a part of our society, and so are acronyms.
It's having that switch-flipping ability that makes it OK. I swear around friends, I don't at work; I write acronyms in instant messages, I don't in e-mails I send at work. Pretty simple. - Blizzardman, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8He mentions how efficient it is yet then says how that can lead to our demise... Couldn't the same thing be said about telephones? Talking quickly to someone instead of actually physically going to their residence can be spinned as the "demolition of social skills". I will agree with this article if people actually speak like this in public.
- chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6And now for something completely different...
- brettotte1, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7This happened LONG AGO. Kids today cannot form sentences nor even SPEAK correctly. Instant messaging merely encouraged it to get worse.
- Mike89, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I once saw my sister (14) type out a sentence on MSN, properly formulated and spelled, then go back through it to change things like "too" to "2" and "like" to "lyk".
- vinny429, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8"Instant messaging has destroyed the ability of young people to put together coherent sentence structure, along with destroying proper punctuation and capitalization. How sad."
My grammar may be a bit rusty, but I don't think "How sad." is a complete sentence. - mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5..do you really expect anyone to read any of that?
- krosk, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Typing on AIM is one thing, writing an essay, talking to a friend on the phone or in person is completely different. I use some abbreviations merely because they are convenient. But I don't let those slip into formal writing. Or even informal writing such as on Digg comments. Sure, my grammar may not be perfect, but it is professional when I need it to be, and casual when I'm lazy. Saying that AOL-speak is destroying the English language is *****. AOL-speak is merely necessary right now, we don't have computers that link directly to our brains that type out thoughts as soon as they enter your head. This guy is an alarmist. No digg.
- Karisson, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7It's not the protocol, it's the userbase. For some reason, AIM attracts younger users more than ICQ, MSN, etc. The younger generation tends to use abbreviations as a quick way to chat with friends. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's certainly not good grammar.
- soupisgoodfood, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Everytime this issues comes up, some dolt spits out this "but it's evolution of language" thing without even thinking. You see, just because something changes, it does not nessesaritly mean that it's evolving.
Sure, there are some advantages to this trend, but that doesn't mean that on the whole it's progress. - Negyxo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5This feels very 1997....Lame.
- deb6404, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are impatient of restraint." - Hesiod, 8 B.C.
So we're really headed for disaster THIS time?
Interesting argument in this piece with some truth to it, but this is not a regression of language. Language evolves precisely because it becomes simpler -- not because we somehow naturally try to make it more complicated. This "AOL-speak" is just a natural progression that has been sped up by orders of magnitude by the ease with which we can communicate on the internet. Ask anyone who studies Latin or French (me) if they think our language has become more or less complicated. They'll tell you the answer right away -- we've got it easy! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Ironic that this author criticises others for their inability to write yet manages to say so little in this article with so many words.
- CJHtxGeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I still think ALL CAPS AND NEVER TURNING THEM OFF IS MORE ANNOYING? DONT YOU THINK SO? ITS JUST SO WRONG!
- Canthros, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4At best, leet is a dialect of another language, which relies heavily on non-standard orthography and simplified grammar. It is no more a language of its own than ebonics was.
- fatcat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I'm 16, does that mean I can't form coherent sentences?
- Akyan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Surely the need to cut corners with typing is a result of people not bothering to properly learn how to touch type?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I hate the bitches wHo TyPe lIkE tHiS
- mikelesq, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The first time I saw an instant message abbreviation was in 1989 on our college VAX.
Yes, I'm old. What of it?
Ahem. The point is, instant messaging abbreviations actually arose out of the use of instant messaging by intelligent, educated people who found a creative way to type at conversational speed. Now, deliberately using a zero for the letter 'O' is just irritating, but is hardly the linguistic equivalent of the Visigoths sacking Rome. -
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