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We've been attracting a lot of new members (31,874) among which are a bunch of kids who obviously flunked English class. This place was created by and is maintained by a group of dedicated adults. we're the result of 3.5 billion years of evolution and around 16 thousand years of civilization. The key to our success is the ability to pass on our collective knowledge and share ideas. The written language is essential to this process with correct spelling and grammar ensuring that our ideas will be passed on with their meaning and intent intact.
If you want to use shorthand, become a court reporter, otherwise SPELL CORRECTLY! Shit like 'pls', 'Idk' and 'rlly' is meaningless to the vast majority of people...the kind of knowledgeable folks you want answers from. Spelling and grammar count.
And by the way, what the hell do you do with the half second you save by not writing out the entire word? Are you stopping wars or curing cancer?idk language evolves fr rly gotta get over it js..
At least we don't have gen alphas here (yet) I can't even understand half the shit my cousins say and I'm not (that) much older than them.
I do have to agree one this one with Ethiopia. Although shorthand might be handy when texting ( limit of characters), it is not necessary if you got ample space.
I am a non native English speaker, and in my language ( Dutch) the younger generation uses shorthand to.
W8 FF. ( which means as much as " wait for a minute")
I know this abbreviation, but else it is a secret code. I figured it out by saying it oud loud ( phonetic).
But if half a message consists off these kind of things, I would not even bother to figure it out.
so the person who writes this way, say asking a question, would get no reply from me for I don't understand what they say/want.
Mona mentioned the next generation is even worse.
Language and writing are like every art, it needs to be practised, or one looses skills.
Even in newspapers nowadays, if often see sentences that are wrong, punctuation marks are missing,wrong articles ( IT house , instead of THE house), and general misspelling.
I can still get the story behind the article, but it is a struggle.
And as Ethiopia said, what are you gonna do with the 0.05 seconds time you saved?
But to the young we are probably grouchy old farts that can't stay up with the changing world 😉It's not so much that it's done to save time, it's just...that's how we talk nowadays. I code switch to interact with the largely older audience here but get me with friends and I'm completely different.
Twitter, tiktok, and other short form social media have completely changed the landscape of how people interact. Whether you think that's good or bad is irrelevant, it's already done and there's no undoing it.
Ultimately, the answer is that language has always been descriptive, not proscriptive. If 75% of the people agree that "idk" is shorthand for "I don't know" then "idk" is a valid entry in the english language.
I swear though, if "skibidi" ever gets entered into the OED, I'm burning the planet down and we're starting over from scratch.
@Ethiopia, It's our generation who came up with all the text/tech-speak TLAs, (the ancestor of emojis) smileys and leet-speak! 😉 lol
1 b3t h4lf th3 k1d5 t0d4y d0n't kn0w wh4t ID-10-T 0r PEBCAK m34n5 4nym0r3.
That is without getting into the related British / American spelling issue.
'TBH' I can appreciate that the American spellings are phonetic.
The one that particularly works well is to take the French word for 'bird'.
Oiseau with Oiseaux being plural.
I see the American spelling to be 'wazo'
Much simpler, neater & easier to use. It sounds the same, right?
🙂
It sounds the same, right?
One of my pet peeves is the way Americans use a hard Ch when pronouncing words like Chassis. I mean, I'm English and we have rivalry with our French cousins going back to 1066, but we still use the French soft Ch!
Don't even get me started on Solder! There's an L in there for a reason!
In Orwells 1984, newspeak was introduced. If one reads the book, it seems just an other detail off the world he created.
But, he had a deeper argument if you like, and he needed this newspeak to get it across.
The whole point was, that if one does not have words to give to certain Ideas, one could not form those ideas anymore.
This was achieved by using less and less words, and giving but a single meaning to words.If I create a parallel to all the abbreviations we are talking about, one could argue that, if language "shrinks" , we will have less and less possibilities to vent our thoughts.
I know this might be far fetched, but if I see the command of words, or the lack of it in modern youth....@gaver, that makes me think of this quote:
“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and LadiesTHAT certainly struck a chord. I saw a statement somewhere that mentioned that young folks shouldn't make fun of older people needing help with computers. After all, we taught them how to use a spoon.
@SkippyTheMeh Speaking of American vs British English; suggest; which American English speakers often pronounce with a hard g followed by a soft g, buoy - pronounced booey, niche - nitch etc. always grate on my nerves, as a UK English speaker - and that's before one gets into the pronunciation of places; for example, I've heard Qatar pronounced ''Cutter'' by many in the American media recently. And CV (curriculum vitae) being referred to as a resume, colleagues being co-workers and the overuse of the term ''community''. And, Americans really seem to have something against the letter ''u'', e.g., color, neighbor, labor, etc.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love my American brothers and sisters, but it often feels as though we're speaking a completely different language.
Quick anecdote; an American relative spent a few weeks during the summer with us when I was a child. When she was preparing to leave, she asked my sister to fetch her ''pocketbook'' from the bedroom. My sister returned moments later and said; ''It's not there.'' American relative replies; ''I left it on the bed.'' So I said I'd check. The only thing she had left on the bed was her handbag, so I returned to tell her, ''I don't see any book there, but you've left your handbag on the bed''. She burst out laughing and explained that a ''pocketbook'' WAS a handbag, which confused the hell out of my nine year old self. I mean; how the heck are a bag and a book the SAME thing?
This whole discussion has reminded me of all the other modern terms/expressions I loathe. For example:
''I put him/her on blast''
''It was fire!''
''He/she was dripping in rizz''
''Baby mama/baby daddy'' (what the f*** is wrong with saying ''the father/mother of my child'')
''304'' as a slang term for ''hoe'', which in itself is a slang term for wh***. The only hoe I knew growing up was the gardening implement.
''Glazing him/her up'' meaning to pander or overly praise someone; usually when it isn't deserved. Often used as a means to get something in return.
''The ick''
There's so many more, but these are the first that come to mind.By the way; I'm only in my thirties, and most would be forgiven for thinking that I'm seventy plus. But, I suppose I'm just an old fashioned girl who was raised to speak properly and I like to do so.
@Reinecarola, Two cultures separated by a common language... I've worked with and for Americans so got quite used to dropping as many British-English colloquialisms as possible when in conversation. Although... it was sometimes amusing to hear the stunned silence on the other end of the phone when I said I was just popping outside to smoke a fag. The UK/US differences in meaning for the word 'fanny' always make me giggle like a schoolboy as does listening to an American try and pronounce Worcestershire or Leicester (hint: it's 'Wust-er-shear' and 'Lest-er') for the first time.
There are a few bits of youth slang that wind me up, but I'm also old enough to remember using words like 'rad' and 'wicked-cool' so I'm in not position to judge.
@InverseKinematics
I wouldn't per se suspect dark motives driving the "dumbing down".
There could be a whole different drive behind it( As long as we ar philosophising).
Back in the time of the caveman, it was hard to get enough food at times, so to preserve energy, they minimised activities.
Now, in the modern times, with our (still) caveman brain, we relish the fact that a lot of things can be taken over by apps, so we need to use less energy.
The fact that there is plenty to eat now, does not register by that ancient brain.IF , however, there is a hidden agenda behind it, remember the dumbing does not stop because of sex, religion, or origin. Hence it will hit everyone, so in the end even the evil genius is a blabbering fool, speaking in 3 letter words, uttering.... IDK 😉
@SkippyTheMeh I went to uni with a girl from Arizona. After a long day spent cycling around the countryside with her new boyfriend, she announced that her fanny was aching. We all collapsed into fits of laughter and she was nonplussed as to why. When we recovered, we explained that ''fanny'' means something entirely different on this side of the Atlantic... As a smoker, I often use the expression, ''I'm just nipping out for a fag'' and normally no one passes any remarks as everyone speaks the same. An American in our group one night was both mystified and outraged that I dared use that term, and launched into a lecture on slurs, until it was explained that it means something different here and to calm the heck down.
As someone born in Berks. to an English dad and an Irish mum and having being raised until age six in England, then moved to be near my ailing grandfather in Ireland, before moving back to England at sixteen, then back again to Ireland in my late twenties, and as a result have a very confusing accent, effing and jeffing is second nature to me - polite company and strangers being the exception - and Americans are far more Puritanical when it comes to the word c***, which I use liberally. ''Oi, c*** is a term of endearment here, yet Yanks are shocked to the core, because ''misogyny, etc, etc''.
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