News (Languages) No LOL matter: tween texting may lead to poor grammar skills

[Bestiola]

Text messaging may offer tweens a quick way to send notes to friends and family, but it could lead to declining language and grammar skills, according to researchers.

Tweens who frequently use language adaptations -- techspeak -- when they text performed poorly on a grammar test, said Drew Cingel, a former undergraduate student in communications, Penn State, and currently a doctoral candidate in media, technology and society, Northwestern University.
When tweens write in techspeak, they often use shortcuts, such as homophones, omissions of non-essential letters and initials, to quickly and efficiently compose a text message.

"Overall, there is evidence of a decline in grammar scores based on the number of adaptations in sent text messages, controlling for age and grade," Cingel said.
Not only did frequent texting negatively predict the test results, but both sending and receiving text adaptations were associated with how poorly they performed on the test, according to Sundar.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120726122244.htm

 

[Akela]

We need to make this one a sticky. In the Translation forum.

 

[cinefactus]

I put a link to it in the Rules and Guidelines...

 

[Lucius Aelius]

I hardly see this as a decline. Rather, it is English continuing to do what all living tongues do - change and evolve.

 

[cinefactus]

Or iz it wat al nu genz do. RebL agst the valuz of ther oldz?

 

[Nikolaos]

Evolution of the written language usually seems to be driven by the educated, I think. Until the advent of text speak, anyway...

 

[Lucius Aelius]

Evolution of the written language usually seems to be driven by the educated, I think. Until the advent of text speak, anyway...

For the better part of history I don't think that most of those who were not "the educated" could even use written language at any level beyond the very basic.

 

[Nikolaos]

Exactly - written language is an attribute of educated discourse. Drastic alterations like textspeak will not stand the test of time without the endorsement of educated writers - it exists alongside standard written English (which, unlike the spoken variant, can be standardized by convention), and varies heavily from "writer" to writer.

 

[Iohannes Aurum]

Can someone with mod powers replace the word "translate" with "xlate" for the official rule post (found in the "Here is how" link in my sig), where you added the link to this page? I realized that "xlate" is becoming a common txtspk form of "translate."

 

[Gregorius]

I'm a member of a Yahoo newsgroup on spelling reform, and many members have designed their own proposed spelling systems. There's actually one guy who who drew inspiration from tech-speak for his own scheme, QicRyt. He places unusually high focus on brevity as a criterion. Fortunately though, most other members, despite their agreement that traditional spelling has got to go, don't agree with his conviction that such a highly abbreviated notation is the ultimate solution. At best, we see it as an efficient standard for casual electronic messaging but certainly not something worthy of the next Shakespeare.

The inventor himself, however, is adamant to the point of arrogance as to the superiority of QicRyt, calling his own work a "masterpiece." I'm even less worried than I was before about the possible ascendency of a tech-speak-esque orthography since I noticed his tendency to make a buffet of his own foot.* I mean, the guy insists that basic phonological knowledge is unnecessary for a reformer and that there are only 24 meaningfully distinct sounds in the English language, despite repeated explanations to the contrary by other members (including myself)!

*non-native English-speakers: a common idiom for self-embarrassment is "to put one's foot in his/her mouth")

 

[Akela]

I mean, the guy insists that basic phonological knowledge is unnecessary for a reformer and that there are only 24 meaningfully distinct sounds in the English language, despite repeated explanations to the contrary by other members (including myself)!

What do I keep thinking of Fomenko's Chronology.

 

[Iordanus]

I only text like I normally write, because I simply can't understand a word of the so-called 'shorthand' message-speak.

 

[Arca Defectionis]

I, for one, am all for chatspeak; it's more efficient and usually more faithful to pronunciation. Of course, you must be aware of your audience when you use it, and some chatspeak is just illegible. but theres no reason y sum academic snobs should hav ne rite 2 call cer10 forms of english 'proper' n sum 'improper,' since there no more authoritys on english usage then i am. theres nobody w the rite 2 decide wats a word n wat isnt, or wats the rite way 2 spel a word. in spanish theres the real academia española, n in french theres the académie française. but english has no such authority. the only important thing 2 remember is u hav 2 b understood or the point of language is lost. the 'educ8ed' ppl who pretend there able to regul8 my english just do so cuz it makes em feel smart, but al there rly is is pre10tiousness n e1337ism.

Also, I'm even more in favor of the simplification of English spelling - not by some contrived centralized means, but by natural free usage that eliminates unnecessary distinctions in language by homogenizing homophones and cutting out etymologically induced silent letters. And particularly the grammar needs to be simplified; fortunately, such unnecessary distinctions as 'who/ whom' are dying out. Nobody answers the phone and says "this is he" anymore. "was" is quickly becoming a perfectly acceptable alternative to "were" in unreal conditionals. The English subjunctive is so seldom used it sounds wrong now. I for one welcome these changes and the exciting era of vigorous usage they're sure to usher in.

 

[cinefactus]

The problem with textspeak is that when you read, you are not reading all the letters, but recognising the patterns. This means that if you use the accepted spelling, people can read what you have written very quickly. In contrast, textspeak is very laborious to slog through.

 

[Iordanus]

To me, those things such as lol, rofl or brb are fine as they are simply acronyms to popular phrases.
It has to be ensured that the audience would be able to understand those correctly. A good example is LOL which can mean 'laughing out loud' or sometimes confused by the older generations: 'lots of love'.
Many people don't like these changes is not because that they are being snobby, but they can't interpret properly the things after the change, like numbers in words, and they would rather leave the words as they are 'normally'.

By the way, what is e1337ism? I'm still trying to work that out...

 

[cinefactus]

A good example is LOL which can mean 'laughing out loud' or sometimes confused by the older generations: 'lots of love'.

Or 'medically' Little Old Lady

 

[Arca Defectionis]

Really? I've run into a great deal of snobby responses to chatspeak. It's really a polarizing issue. The people who hate it often complain that users are idiots who can't spell; truth is, many of the users of chatspeak probably do have trouble spelling, but they can spell in chatspeak. Writing in chatspeak is easier and really a better system. Speaking to Cinefactus's point, though, chatspeak usually makes things a lot easier on the typist, but not so much on the reader. I usually can read it fine, but it certainly doesn't speed things up for me. 2, b, r, u, w, n, 4, etc. are really quite easy to read and when you add up the time saved for the typist it really is significant, in my experience.

e1337ism was a bit of tongue-in-cheek; it's a play on 'leet' and in fact e1337ism requires more characters than elitism. It was just a joke.

 

[Nikolaos]

It takes more effort for me to abbreviate words on the keyboard than to spell them out, especially when numbers are involved. Just as in reading, I recognize the "shape" of words when touch-typing, and the number row is just hard to reach anyway. Number typing is more efficient on the numpad.

 

[Iordanus]

To be able to abbreviate words efficiently one really has to know the patterns very well, like they know the actual words, orelse it's going to end up like "Certain... is there a number in there? Oh yes, 10, cer10!"
The other thing is that, those patterns can never be wholly recognised as people just keep creating them and readers will have to decipher one after another, while there are different ways to create those, such as phonetically, or visually (which is probably the most controversial one as people just keep saying "that's no where near the word").

 

[cogitans]

I'm not really a fan of textspeak, but no, it's not a sign of "decay" nor of poor grammar skills. Language evolves and most people can still produce syntactically well-formed sentences.

Reading articles on language can be downright aggravating, because they perpetuate senseless myths more often than not.