Latest Report on the Decline of Civilisation

[Rum]

800 wurds? Tha's more dan 400 innit?

[Sisifo]

I'm going to be the devil's advocate here. Language it's a tool for communication. The goal is communication, not mastering the tool. If one person is among others and he or she is the odd one out because can't downgrade the language to melt with the others, it can never be said that he is the one doing it right. In the end, everyone communicates except him.

Richness of language and culture has the value that provides you with a wider scope of possibilities. The idea is that you can be comfortable with more people: doctors, artists, peasants, tramps. If your culture makes you uncomfortable with any other who doesn't belong to that level, then you become a slave of the tool, and the tool doesn't serve as it should.

Lack of language closes doors, but you can also close doors yourself in the other end of the line.

In the end, we are just using a pityful downgrade of Indo-European...

[Chinaski]

I despise teenspeak, and except for the few humorous examples of internet-derived jargon, will refuse to speak that way on any message board. Full sentences for me.

[Animavore]

I agree with Charlou here. I know lots of teenagers ( ) and most of them text completely different to how they talk.
In fact most people here are the same. Who says LOL in real life?
The only thing I don't like about modern teenage life is that for some reason, in the last couple of years, being an absolute drama causing cunt seems to be the fashion for girls (applies to Ireland only I think).

[Hermit]

Full sentences for me.

Joke, right?

[Chinaski]

Full sentences for me.

Joke, right?

Wasn't sure if that would come across.

In all seriousness, however, I try not to fall into the simplified, banal, nerve-gratingly blunt register that is teenspeak.

You know what's really confusing? Swiss-German textspeak.

[Hermit]

Yet another alarmist angle in an article.

Yes. Typical tabloid reportage. And we know why tabloid papers exist, don't we? How ironic.

Furthermore, Ghatanothoa pointed out that while some of us may feel outraged by the cretinisation of the unwashed masses, they are indispensible for the running of industry. Without them there'd be nobody to do those mindnumbingly tedious, yet essential jobs. At one stage Germany found it necessary to import one million undereducated, nominally temporary migrants from less developed countries (mainly Turkey) to fill those positions. Without them garbage collection would have been in strife, factories requiring what is euphemistically called 'process work' would have been ham-strung and a significant portion of fruit and vegetables would have perished for the lack of harvesters.

I also agree with Sisifo. Snooty members of the upper classes and sycophantic aspirants to those social strata do nobody - including themselves - any favours by insisting on an incapacity to learn to communicate with fellow human beings who get by with using no more than 800 different words on an average day.

[FBM]

Full sentences for me.

Joke, right?

Wasn't sure if that would come across.

Pretty quick, that one, eh?

[JimC]

Yet another alarmist angle in an article.

Yes. Typical tabloid reportage. And we know why tabloid papers exist, don't we? How ironic.

Furthermore, Ghatanothoa pointed out that while some of us may feel outraged by the cretinisation of the unwashed masses, they are indispensible for the running of industry. Without them there'd be nobody to do those mindnumbingly tedious, yet essential jobs. At one stage Germany found it necessary to import one million undereducated, nominally temporary migrants from less developed countries (mainly Turkey) to fill those positions. Without them garbage collection would have been in strife, factories requiring what is euphemistically called 'process work' would have been ham-strung and a significant portion of fruit and vegetables would have perished for the lack of harvesters.

I also agree with Sisifo. Snooty members of the upper classes and sycophantic aspirants to those social strata do nobody - including themselves - any favours by insisting on an incapacity to learn to communicate with fellow human beings who get by with using no more than 800 different words on an average day.

There are some potential problems with the viewpoints expressed in this post, Seraph...

To take your last point first, it suggests that it is the duty of the mainstream, those who can use (at least potentially) the full capacity of the English language, to take the time to learn a rapidly changing system of teenage argot to communicate with the little dears... For a start, they would certainly not appreciate it, since part of the joy of their slang world is excluding adults as much as possible...

In addition, tough shit - If they want to fully participate in the adult world, whose rich communication is amply exhibited in your own posts, they can get motivated and do some reading.

The earlier paragraph seems to almost welcome the existence and maintenance of an illiterate sub-class of morlocks (although I'm sure that was not your intention). Those born into marginalised cultural ghettos should have the opportunity via education to join the wider community, and aspire to anything they wish. To do so, they will need to eventually move beyond the limitations of text-speak (which does not mean abandoning it...). The OP was suggesting that there are some almost addictive aspects of that technology which may prevent some young people from making the leap...

[Trolldor]

Teenagers with access to the internet, to facebook and twitter, to mobile phones are possessed of every faculty required to learn, to think and speak, to analyse, to develop in to well-informed, intelligent adults. They choose not to, and their parents let them.


Secondly, people who are employed in menial tasks rarely do so out of choice, but rather necessity.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

...Who says LOL in real life?..

My brother-in-law once did.