Text Language Is NOT English!

OMG 4COL! There are times, if someone sends me a text on my phone or an instant messenger, I have to look up what that person has actually written. For instance, you probably know what the OMG stands for, but you might not know what 4COL is. I certainly wouldn't know that stands for "for crying out loud."

I did have to look that one up and there are numerous sites out there where you can learn what various text-language messages mean. Just Google it!

But I'm not kidding when I say those kinds of message are not English! Why? Well there can be several reasons, not the least of which is that not everyone knows what it means. WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?

Anybody got some translator microbes? (And if you get that reference, you're a scifi geek just like me!)

I was recently at a function where I ran into an old teacher I know and a person I went to school with who has since been a teacher. We got to talking about language and the changes we have seen in the last several years.

I mentioned a story I have heard about, though not independently confirmed, that some college-level writing classes have begun accepting papers with text language. Both of the people to whom I was speaking told me they had seen such papers in the classes they taught at the high school level. One even mentioned a student protesting a poor grade on such a paper, saying something about, "Well I could do that last year."

There are days I simply know I'm not cut out to be a teacher. I get frustrated too easily and these kinds of things... Splinter under your nail, anybody? Or how about fingernails on a chalkboard? Not that a lot younger people would know what a chalkboard is anymore, or what fingernails sound like when dragged down one. *wince*

If I were a teacher and was handed a paper containing such text-language writing, I probably wouldn't even read it. It would be handed back to the student with a big, red letter on it. And no, that would not be an A. Nor am I referencing a well known book by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

I think, in some ways, this sort of devolution of written language is why I see some of the mistakes I wrote about in my last post. People have become accustomed to seeing acronyms for phrases, such as LOL (laugh out loud) or TTYL (talk to you later).

Why should people bother knowing how to properly write something when they can just fill in the blanks with "WIBNI people would STFU?" (In case you need a translation, that says "Wouldn't it be nice if people would shut the 'freak' up?") Someone's probably thinking that about me right now. But you know what? Since this is MY blog, I can say almost anything I want, within reason. If they don't want to see it, they don't have to read.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of bloggers leave their reason at the door to the room where they have their computer. Just saying, I have seen some really out there things in blogs that make me wonder if some people have any gray matter. Oh well!

Back on topic...

I have to admit I was rather dismayed, though not surprised, to learn that sexual language has also cropped up in these shorthands. For example, I saw LH6 on one of the many "dictionaries" of text language I found online. That apparently stands for "let's have sex." No, I'm not propositioning you... Just giving an example.

With the recent news regarding sexting and child pornography, I have to wonder if officers have this kind of "dictionary" in which to look up some of these things. Otherwise, how in the world do they know if some of what they see actually falls under the umbrella of sexting?

Now that sexting has become a serious crime, even if it involves two minors, it must be an issue to address. And again, I'm not sure a lot of older people, even though I don't quite fall into that range yet, would understand the short-hand messages that fly between the phones, smart phones and computers to which the younger generations have become so attached.

At any rate, because these messages have to be translated, whether by looking up the integral parts or by someone who actually "speaks the language," I do not consider text language to be English.

Perhaps it is growing into a separate dialect. But it is no longer the language that is supposedly taught in schools.

I have at least two other reasons I don't consider this kind of writing to be English that easily come to mind. However, due to the length of this post, I will discuss both of them (as they are related) in a future post.

In case you are interested - Here are some links to online "text dictionaries" I found...
Text Message Abbreviations from Webopedia
"The Largest List of Text Message Shorthand (IM, SMS) and Internet Acronyms" from NetLingo
Translate Your Txt Messages from Lingo2Word

There's even some for the various "smileys" you can use.

I'm sure there are more, but why try and list all of them? Like the Internet itself, this "language" is in an almost constant state of flux. That means the definitions might change over time...

Posted Thanksgiving weekend 2010.