A sharp DING! screeched in my ears, and my eyes shot open. The source of the sound was not a gunshot, nor an obnoxious construction worker drilling into walls at the untimeliest hour possible, nor a very loud car honk. It was my phone. Making a mental note to put my mobile on silent, I sluggishly checked my texts. There was one from my eccentric friend that read:
sup?????? atm im at this v. cool party near town. its @ this venue near that 1 chinese canteen, & theres this guy whose jokes really leave u rofl and lol. do u want to come?????? kmp!!!!!
My eyes drifted helplessly across the message several times, not really deciphering its meaning.
So, was my friend at a party in an ATM? And what was a ‘rofl’? Perhaps a strange kind of a waffle? But why would someone’s joke leave you with a waffle? After extensive research, I found that ‘atm’ stood for ‘at the moment’, and ‘rofl’ was not a waffle, but meant ‘rolling on the floor laughing’, and ‘kmp’ was ‘keep me posted’.
I frowned. As an English language teacher, I was offended and appalled at the quality of grammar. Is it really that hard to type a few extra words to give clarity to a text message? Or was I too old school who needed a crash course in slangs and abbreviations?
The advent of technology and internet has given birth to social media that has limitless impact on the world. It has transformed communication and has far-reaching effects on the way people communicate in English these days. It has allowed interconnectivity, faster communication, and above all created a need for speed! While communicating at breakneck speeds is no longer a luxury, typing large words on blocky keyboards has justified the practice of slangs and abbreviations to appear in conversations. We have long kissed goodbyes to lengthy sentences and gone are the days when the world was devoted to immaculate English. Short and punchy sentences are taking both; the young and the old by a storm. Furthermore, it is believed that people started slangs due to platforms like Facebook /Twitter which had a character limit enforcing you to keep your communication precise and concise. The limit has doubled but the tradition of using abbreviations is still in vogue. Such social sites encourage acronyms like LOL, BRB, TTYL, OMG or emoticons etc. which are now commonplace for whole sentences. I often maintain that it is a lazy man’s way of communicating, but then no one said these platforms were a place to authenticate one’s creative or academic writing!!
I recall my childhood days where we were a prey to our English teacher’s wrath at the mere use of the symbol ‘&’ instead of the word ‘and’. Only a few abbreviations like P.T.O or etc. were accepted, allowed and tolerated. Today, people casually use abbreviations like BRB, DM, LOL and many more in everyday speech, forever affecting the English language.
What’s even worse, texting particularly on phones has taken the meaning out of context and given it a completely different definition. Just the other day I came across a hilarious extract:
Mom: Your great aunt just passed away. LOL
Son: Why is that funny?
Mom: It’s not funny David. What do you mean?
Son: Mom lol means laughing out loud!
Mom: Oh my goodness!! I sent that to everyone I thought it meant lots of love. I have to call everyone back. Oh God!
While you may lightheartedly chuckle as you read this, it cannot be ignored that it’s a clear-cut example of shorthand variants that can create detrimental confusion and chaos.
There is no doubt that grammar and syntax have lost their charm. In fact now the caps lock button on your device just sits idly collecting dust along with the comma and the full stop key. The only thing keeping the entire English language from falling apart into a pandemonium of lowercase beginning letters and sentences without punctuation are books and other forms of literature. It’s slightly humorous, really. After centuries worth of going through phases and merging with other languages, the thing that ultimately destroys English is the need for speed and constraint of characters.
Now, a conversation over WhatsApp with one of your friends probably looks something like this:
You: hi wassup ????? btw what is our hw??
Friend: dunno
You: ugh ill just ask someone else
Friend: If u find out, pls tell me!!!!!
If I add a thousand more emojis, that’s a pretty accurate WhatsApp chat.
That is not to say that if you replace ‘will be right back’ with BRB or ‘talk to you later’ with TTYL, social platforms will come to a standstill or crash! But eventually, you will succumb to such jargon either to save your typing efforts or to keep up with the world.
As much as I criticize these modern-day chats and get overwhelmed with acronyms, we must agree that they are abundantly creative. Who could have thought that a combination of a letter and a number could also have a place in the English language? And at the same time mean something! Such as U2 is You Too, N1 Nice One, L8 is Late and L8R is Later. I went ‘LOL’ when I saw that 1432 is I Love You Too , 182 is I hate you and ?4U is Question for You.
This baffling phenomenon of creating new words is here to stay. It is no revelation and a source of amazement that the English language is forever evolving. However, a host of new words emerging from social media which easily get incorporated into our mainstream ‘lingo’ and seamlessly glide into our popular usage as easily as sugar mixes in milk will be an on-going and a steady affair.
So, as a teacher of English now that I have reluctantly made peace with the redesigning of the English language, unwillingly accepted that this change must be embraced, I can safely say GTG and see ya L8R!
- Radnyee Naik
Visiting Faculty ELTIS