#textspeak

It took me 2-3 years to learn the shorthand I utilize right now and I just want to say something: there’s nothing fucking wrong with textspeak.

We have this weird perception as working professionals that textspeak is informal, and yes, okay, it is. But we, older folk who weren’t raised on texting, say that it rots your brain, that it prevents people from being able to fully form understandable sentences. But it’s not true, and the science says it’s true, and also I would say that it’s not true.

We’ve been using some kind of textspeak for eons. “Shorthand” gets a better rap because it’s designed for a professional setting, but it’s got a lot of the same characteristics as textspeak because both are designed for speed. For starters, the shorthand alphabet is phonetic. So rather than saying something like, “It might be better for you to go outside” if I were using shorthand phonetics, I would say something like, “It mite B beder 4 U to go outside.” And if I were using textspeak phonetics, it would look like “mite b better 4 u to go outside.” So there’s already a lot of similarities between textspeak and shorthand, but the similarities don’t end there. For example, let’s try “Please take out the trash, thank you.”

In shorthand, I would write this as “Pls tak out trash thx.” The only real difference is that because shorthand is so phonetic, I can drop the silent e’s which wouldn’t be done in textspeak. But superlative words like “the” are cut, common words are abbreviated, words with complicated spellings are shortened and spelled phonetically…

To be honest, knowing textspeak has made my job easier, because I use common text shortcuts to describe more complex ideas. For example: “what do.” Someone who is familiar with the phrase knows that it more or less means “what are you going to do” but it’s much shorter and much faster.

I, in my work capacity, type ppl- instead of people. Here is a real, actual example of something I wrote, in shorthand, while making $20 an hour to do my job:

               Sumary of wht do: of interest to lab resrs or stkhs. Genotypng, earlier ths wk gentyp cattle, do ODFWs salmon. Srv broden comm + binf serv + growng ml, dl, apprch. Machine vish syst for grass vs wheat (instd of tweezer) bcomp high perf comp needs. Act in res tng wkshps to disseminate knoldge… wld be intestng to lok @ esp PDX is dats aswng ?s w/ citzn prog, w/ AI prg, inv spec idetify in rangeland, timstmp upload, infoms models. Synergy there. Wnt to know more @ co-op proj esp in vay area. Mite b god if socio-econimc, that’s specly of VA.

If someone who didn’t know my shorthand shortcuts were to read this, they would think it was absolute nonsense. But I can read it, because I learned a way to type up notes that was quicker than what I could do by writing out full sentences.

And furthermore, I had to turn off my auto-correct settings to even type that nonsense because of course I’ve saved some of the more common abbreviations in Word.

Death of a Language

’CMN m8 ur respzibl fr al diz. Dnt act lk yu knw nuttin abt it. ygm. but still lop yu’

Forgive me, even my poor siri couldn’t figure out what the heck this meant.

NETSPEAK, NETSPEAK, NETSPEAK. I know you have read the comment and if you are such a user of that type of language, please don’t send me that shit.

As David Crystal suggested, language change is an inevitable process. The Internet is slowly changing the way we write and speak. Hence, netspeak is a language in itself that is used mainly online. It features the use of emotions, compounding, coinage, backformation and blending of words to create meaning. Most of this language is very informal, with the user often lacking face to face communication. Hence, computer mediated communication can become hyperpersonal.

So the main question arises, how is netspeak encouraging the death of a language?

Netspeak, which is quite similar to textspeak, is encouraging the death of a language because it promotes the use of nonstandard forms of language, such as slang. These are unique to particular social groups, leading to a great amount of audience segregation since not all understand different forms of slang. Also, young people have the freedom to challenge linguistic norms which is the standard form of language. They want to diverse by creating their own language (e.g. netspeak) by being informal TO exclusively appear as cool/gangsters. Not only that, statistics have shown that using netspeak has a negative impact on students academic writing, leading them to use bad grammar, poor punctuations and improper abbreviations. Students are the future of every human population, imagine what a country would look like with such leaders?

Just like the Jean Aitchison language metaphors, language is now slowly catching the infectious disease where young people are specially creating new words that are getting passed on easily due to computer mediated communication having lower transaction costs.YGM MY G. DUNNO?

Therefore, it is stabbing the standard language in the heart and encouraging non standard language. The pure form of language is slowly crumbling apart just like the crumbling castle view.

On the positive side, descriptivists such as John Henry have suggested that netspeak allows language to be more creative as a means of communication.It encourages phatic communication and helps the people to build interpersonal relationships. However, it is also important to note that  sometimes context collapse can happen when exchanging messages on group chats for different audiences at the same time.

Language is also a part of an individual’s identity, so people must be allowed to express themselves in the same way, right? In the same way, be prepared to get a big fat 0/100 on your exams and rejection in interviews for potential jobs unless you’re looking to do an unskilled job in the future from the way you’re using language BABES.