Is English language evolving?
Today we find students in schools taking resort to sending messages by mobile phone and they devote little time to the kind of writing that people during pre-mobile phone era would do. The result is most of the youngsters today have poor vocabulary and poor linguistic skills. They use scrunched-up abbreviations in texts thus showing that they are very much pressed for time; they can't even write a little word like 'coffee' correctly. If they're so terrifically busy, how do you expect them to settle down with any good reading - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, R K Narayan, even a comic book correctly-spelt and worded - anytime soon? Obviously, their grammatical growth and literary vibrancy are being stunted.
The 'informal' text language they use has a negative effect on their language. Print medium had opened the gates to thousands of new ideas. Print brought publications full of amazing concepts, philosophy to fashion, cookery to communism, that changed the way we think and live. In comparison, what has text language done, except to corrode linguistic refinement, replacing it, in the mistaken view of being 'democratic', with gibberish?
The poorly-worded texts don't do much for the image of the persons sending them. All communication involves not just messages going back and forth but also impressions circulating. Texts that say 'hv snt rpt' instead of 'I have sent you my report' make you think of someone coming to work wearing crumpled clothes and bad attitude - sloppy, unconcerned, unbothered. Even between friends, poorly-worded texts - 'hw abt tht flm' - don't sound cool. They sound illiterate. That's rather different from someone who has vocabulary at their command and uses it with precision and finesse.
But there are people who defend those who use such poorly-worded texts. According to them language must evolve with the times. They say that fears about the impact SMS-speak - crunched language with abbreviations and shortened words - is having on our language skills are not new. This according to them show casual links between people employing such language - created because of the inconvenience of typing long messages on a phone keyboard, character limits etc - and their ability to use or learn more conventional language. They say that texting could actually improve children's language skills. Any change in the way we use language need not be bemoaned. They further say that text-speak doesn't necessarily denote laziness or poor language skills. What it does show is linguistic ingenuity and creativity, particularly among children. To come up with innovative short cuts demands a certain level of linguistic sophistication. Further, texting could help children develop reading skills, since it involves exposure to the written word in a context that they would enjoy.
They conclude by saying, “Such fears have accompanied every innovation in the way we communicate. The advent of the printing press caused a great outcry; many at the time thought that nothing good would come out of it. The invention of the telephone brought its own share of worries. But in every such instance, language has evolved, and it has thrived. Form does not necessarily dictate function and substance. That's a point missed entirely by traditionalists.”
Today we find students in schools taking resort to sending messages by mobile phone and they devote little time to the kind of writing that people during pre-mobile phone era would do. The result is most of the youngsters today have poor vocabulary and poor linguistic skills. They use scrunched-up abbreviations in texts thus showing that they are very much pressed for time; they can't even write a little word like 'coffee' correctly. If they're so terrifically busy, how do you expect them to settle down with any good reading - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, R K Narayan, even a comic book correctly-spelt and worded - anytime soon? Obviously, their grammatical growth and literary vibrancy are being stunted.
The 'informal' text language they use has a negative effect on their language. Print medium had opened the gates to thousands of new ideas. Print brought publications full of amazing concepts, philosophy to fashion, cookery to communism, that changed the way we think and live. In comparison, what has text language done, except to corrode linguistic refinement, replacing it, in the mistaken view of being 'democratic', with gibberish?
The poorly-worded texts don't do much for the image of the persons sending them. All communication involves not just messages going back and forth but also impressions circulating. Texts that say 'hv snt rpt' instead of 'I have sent you my report' make you think of someone coming to work wearing crumpled clothes and bad attitude - sloppy, unconcerned, unbothered. Even between friends, poorly-worded texts - 'hw abt tht flm' - don't sound cool. They sound illiterate. That's rather different from someone who has vocabulary at their command and uses it with precision and finesse.
But there are people who defend those who use such poorly-worded texts. According to them language must evolve with the times. They say that fears about the impact SMS-speak - crunched language with abbreviations and shortened words - is having on our language skills are not new. This according to them show casual links between people employing such language - created because of the inconvenience of typing long messages on a phone keyboard, character limits etc - and their ability to use or learn more conventional language. They say that texting could actually improve children's language skills. Any change in the way we use language need not be bemoaned. They further say that text-speak doesn't necessarily denote laziness or poor language skills. What it does show is linguistic ingenuity and creativity, particularly among children. To come up with innovative short cuts demands a certain level of linguistic sophistication. Further, texting could help children develop reading skills, since it involves exposure to the written word in a context that they would enjoy.
They conclude by saying, “Such fears have accompanied every innovation in the way we communicate. The advent of the printing press caused a great outcry; many at the time thought that nothing good would come out of it. The invention of the telephone brought its own share of worries. But in every such instance, language has evolved, and it has thrived. Form does not necessarily dictate function and substance. That's a point missed entirely by traditionalists.”
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