Stfu b4 i smak u old git!
It's Thursday, so someone is whining about text messaging and its "threat to traditional conventions in writing." The report from the State Examination Commission in Ireland found 15-year-olds "unduly reliant on short sentences, simple tenses and a limited vocabulary".
Now, in the land of Joyce, I can see why they'd be lamenting any move toward Hemingwayesque stylings, but seriously! Prescriptivists really need to learn to get a grip. Couldn't it be a general trend away from literacy - rather than the rise of a new mode of communication - that is the problem? Is there something inherently bad about texting's "use of phonetic spelling"?
I can be as much of a hard-ass grammarian as the next overly educated prig; however, I don't get the hand wringing and breast beating that occurs every time a new pidgin or full-fledged dialect gains popularity. Fo' shizzle beyatches...ain't no thing but a chicken wing...tarry not over such trifles, lest ye perceivest a tempest where none be.
I love my mother tongue. It's the most dynamic, fluid, vital language in the world (I'm biased, can y'all tell?). No academy or crazy Culture Minister dictates what can or can't be said. The sun may have set on the British Empire, but English prevails. Eventually, all languages are absorbed into some dialect of English (I'm waiting for Khosian and the other African click-languages) and in time, even the "standard" gets many of those additions. Its grammar and spelling change according to fashion, whimsy, and local colouration, but English prevails.
As with telegraphs and radios before, English will survive the onslaught of texting teens. English prevails.
2 comments:
Almost on topic, The Avid Reader bookstore is moving in to the old Tower Books location on Broadway.
Just warmed my heart that despite all the changes to music packaging over the last 100 years (phonograph record, cassette, cd, mp3), that no one has figured out a way to kill books in 5 times that span.
Sweet! Don't spend all your time there, though. At least get some fresh air riding your bike to and from. :)
Sometimes I think we're close to the technology breakthrough that will kill off books - e-paper of some sort - and other times I just don't think it will ever happen. Unlike listening to music, which really only engages hearing, reading is either a two-, three- or four-sense activity: obviously sight; but also the feel of paper in the hands; the sound of words read aloud in some circumstances; and even the musty, dusty smell of an old book. I really like that permanence, too. I'm not sure how authoritative I'd find a book that could download errata and addenda automatically.
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