Emerging new writing style

This style of writing is the unfortunate love child from the sad sack marriage between being a lazy writer and a cell phone texting addict.

Aha! thank you Tsar

By coincidence just a few minutes later, another



I don't even try to read them, how about you

I think I know which writer did this hideous message without knowing which thread it was in. He's a terrible writer even if he wrote perfect or near perfect grammar and with a spot of decent spelling.

If you do a quick spell check on his nonsense:

It absolutely doesn't help at all! What is he trying to babble on about?

Good q, Tsar. As I said, I never read them

The habit of writing everything in text style , I believe, is the single most destructive influence of the electronic revolution on the English language. To me it is frightening.

No, it's exclusive to the idiots in this forum, not any Joyce and McCarthy wannabes.

It's not lazy. It's disrespectful. Kind of like walking into someone's house, plopping you boney ass in a chair, and putting your dirty feet on the table.

It's pretty standard texting talk.

It's a cousin of the Urban Dictionary approach to English language usage.

You don't know how to spell it, it takes too long to type it out - -- text talk it.

You don't know what a word means, can't be bothered to find out --- make up a definition.

<shrug>

Language continues to change.

Absolutely true. But need we maim it or even amputate certain limbs in order to change it?

Hasn't every generation said something like that about language and music (at the very least)?

Hmmm. Prob'ly so.

Chaucer probably didn't think that future generations would need a decoder ring to understand his work.


http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/CT-prolog-para.html



The Squire's Portrait


THE SQUIRE
79: With hym ther was his sone, a yong squier,
80: A lovyere and a lusty bacheler,
81: With lokkes crulle as they were leyd in presse.
82: Of twenty yeer of age he was, I gesse.
83: Of his stature he was of evene lengthe,
84: And wonderly delyvere, and of greet strengthe.
85: And he hadde been somtyme in chyvachie
86: In flaundres, in artoys, and pycardie,
87: And born hym weel, as of so litel space,
88: In hope to stonden in his lady grace.
89: Embrouded was he, as it were a meede
90: Al ful of fresshe floures, whyte and reede.
91: Syngynge he was, or floytynge, al the day;
92: He was as fressh as is the month of may.
93: Short was his gowne, with sleves longe and wyde.
94: Wel koude he sitte on hors and faire ryde.
95: He koude songes make and wel endite,
96: Juste and eek daunce, and weel purtreye and write.
97: So hoote he lovede that by nyghtertale.
98: He sleep namoore than dooth a nyghtyngale.
99: Curteis he was, lowely, and servysable,
100: And carf biforn his fader at the table.

I don't need a decoder ring to understand every word in that passage. And Chaucer's work is beside the point, as far as I can see. He was not even creating a new language, really, just accurately transcribing the language that had already become the lingua franca in previously Norman-speaking England. He was using vocabulary that was in everyday use and spelling it more or less phonetically, as he heard it.

which is precisely what the poster that is being quoted in the OP is doing

I can see where it's possible to argue your point of view, but I disagree with it. Needless truncation of words (e.g. 'bc' for because or 'u' for you etc.) is not the same as phonetic spelling. The point is that it's entirely appropriate in texting where condensed brevity is of the essence. But why carry on into standard English where there is no such necessity?

I think u for you is fine for phonetic spelling.

It's not the way I like to write, and I find some of it difficult to read, but I recognize it as a way of the future.

I can barely understand any of verbivore's posts here or on FB, but it is the way much of the subcontinent seems to post and they're likely to be significant deciders in the future use of English.

I enjoy language in many ways, the meanings, the sounds, the musicality of it, the clarity of it, the amorphous aspect to some of it, the pictures I see in my mind from the words sounding in my ears, the look of the words themselves in print; I like word play and at least some word games. I rather like urban dictionary.

On text speak/text typing, that's been going on for quite a while, including it showing up in the writing of people who text now by second nature... maybe more easily than what to us elders is first nature. I don't love it, almost hate it, but not quite. As ehBeth says, essentially, it is the way it is, and I know it can be quite efficient. It's true that I rarely bother to read the threads that are text-full. But I'm not so sure what I think of as literate writing, which at best represents (to me) complex thinking, will be lost to the wages of text writing. I'm not so sure the modes have to be antithetical - people will probably use both as years go on, and they'll be apt to interweave some.

A series of foolish posts telling us, in effect, that not only should we accept ignorance, we should embrace it as artful.

"Me think pretty goils voting on Obama are much f*cking good!"

Urban Poetry!

Who are we to judge the guttural utterances of idiots?

Indeed.