Is it just me or is online slang getting a little outdated? I am actually getting more interested in being precise, because let's face it, jabbing online is hard enough to interpret without the misspellings and lack of punctuation (deliberate or not).
I am also starting to believe that what our parents and teachers thought when AIM and MySpace first came out is true: if you write enough the wrong way, you start to forget the right way to do it. I know that there are plenty of people who do in fact know how to transition from slang to standard and when it is appropriate to use slang. But for those who are growing up with these new technologies, I have doubts about the English language.
On another note, I wonder who the first person was to substitute, "I said..." for "I was like..." That I believe was the beginning of the end. Now we input "like" multiple times throughout our conversations orally and digitally. Everyone knows a person already who uses "like" so many times in a sentence that they are compelled to keep a tally. We have stopped using perfectly good English words for the repetitive, incredibly annoying "like." I am somewhat surprised that "that's what she said" hasn't already turned into "that's what she was like." Wouldn't that be a new nightmare?
I have noticed when I use "like" in place of other words and have consciously made efforts to eliminate the confusion, partly because I don't want to be the person getting tallied, but also because the way we speak tells a lot about us. Take for instance dialect. In every language there are regional differences that come about- changing the pronunciation and usage of words. I actually used to think that online slang was another way to interpret dialect. At one point I used to spell words such as: "over," "nothing" and "my" as "ova," "nuthin" and "mah." I thought it was interesting to write words the way us Worcester folk say them. No one said "r" at the end of words. No one bothered with "i-n-g." It's cute, sure. But there comes a point when we sound uneducated, especially when we stop spelling the words the same as every other dialect. There is already enough confusion between dialects when having an oral conversation. Imagine you are speaking to someone of another dialect and you stumble across a word that you cannot understand. What happens if they write down that word so you can be on the same page and they don't even spell it the same way that you would?
There is a reason that language is defined by it's vocabulary. If we all start speaking different versions of the same language where we assume everyone speaks the same English, there will be a lot of confusion. I'm interested to see where the English language is going.
Lisa check out this poem by Taylor Mali http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azu8XWcHzFM - Mayo
ReplyDeleteCorrect grammar isn't the absolute measure of intelligence, however, the misuse of language is getting us into bad habits, which does make us appear to be dumber (we are dumber than we think anyways). There is always going to be room for slang: there's always new words being coined, it appeals to the young and hip (and the old that want to be cool because of our obsession with youth), plus most of the time, it's a lot easier to say, being informal and thoughtless. People should be thinking about what they are saying, but who wants to do that? I guess it's slang FTW.
ReplyDeleteCorrect grammar isn't the absolute measure of intelligence, however, the misuse of language is getting us into bad habits, which does make us appear to be dumber (we are dumber than we think anyways). There is always going to be room for slang: there's always new words being coined, it appeals to the young and hip (and the old that want to be cool because of our obsession with youth), plus most of the time, it's a lot easier to say, being informal and thoughtless. People should be thinking about what they are saying, but who wants to do that? I guess it's slang FTW. Javi
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