Latest Report on the Decline of Civilisation

[Bella Fortuna]

Teenagers ‘only use 800 different words a day’

A generation of teenagers who communicate via the Internet and by text messages are risking unemployment because their daily vocabulary consists of just 800 words, the Government's new children's communication tsar has warned.

By Aislinn Laing
Published: 7:30AM GMT 11 Jan 2010

Although, according to recent surveys, they know an average of 40,000 words, they tend to favour a "teenspeak" used in text messages, on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and in internet chat rooms like MSN.

One poll, commissioned by Tesco, revealed that while children had the vocabulary to be articulate, the top 20 words they used - including the Vicky Pollard lexicon of “yeah”, “no” and “but” - accounted for about a third of all the words they used.

According to Jean Gross, England's first Communication Champion for Children who started in the post this month, the lack of range will impact negatively on their chances of getting a job.

Miss Gross is planning to launch a nationwide campaign next year to ensure children use their full language potential and are not impeded in the classroom and later, the workplace, because they are inarticulate.

It will target children in primary and secondary schools and she intends to ask QI presenter, author and prolific Twitterer Stephen Fry to back it.

“Teenagers are spending more time communicating through electronic media and text messaging, which is short and brief," she told The Sunday Times. "We need to help today’s teenagers understand the difference between their textspeak and the formal language they need to succeed in life – 800 words will not get you a job.”

She plans to send children with video cameras into workplaces so they can see the range of words used by professionals and share what they have learned with classmates, and wants parents to limit the amount of children under two watch to half an hour a day, replacing it with conversation.

Her concern was raised, she said, by research conducted by Tony McEnery, a professor of linguistics at Lancaster University sponsored by Tesco, who examined 10m words of transcribed speech and 100,000 words from teenagers’ blogs.

As well as establishing that teens use their top 20 words in a third of their speech, he discovered words likely to be entirely alien to adults, including “chenzed”, which means tired or drunk, “spong”, which means silly, and “lol”, the shorthand version of “laugh out loud”.

Both Marks & Spencer boss Sir Stuart Rose and Tesco's Sir Terry Leahy have recently lamented the lack of school-leavers with the right skills for the workplace.

John Bald, a language teaching consultant and former Ofsted schools inspector, said the poor use of language was a deliberate, anti-establishment act.

“There is undoubtedly a culture among teenagers of deliberately stripping away excess verbiage in language," he said.

“When kids are in social situations, the instinct is to simplify. It’s part of a wider anti-school culture that exists among some children which parents and schools need to address.”

But David Crystal, honorary professor of linguistics at Bangor University in Wales, told The Sunday Times that experts simply did not understand the complexities of teen language and had judged it by their own standards.

“The real issue here is that people object to kids having a good vocabulary for hip-hop and not for politics," he said. "They have an articulate vocabulary for the kind of things they want to talk about. Few academics get anywhere near measuring that vocabulary.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... a-day.html

[FBM]

Fewer than 800, if you take out 'uh-unh', 'uh-huh', 'huh?', 'heh-heh', etc...

[Azathoth]

BREAKING NEWS:SUPERMARKETS CANT FIND QUALITY STAFF TO TAKE THEIR SHITTY WAGES.
If the survey sample was taken from Tesco employees 800 words is pretty good going. Where the fuck do they find so many knuckle draggers to work there anyway?

[Feck]

The report should make up it's mind, either the skills of language are dying or most teenagers use some new vocabulary adults don't understand .

I probably don't use a lot more than 800 words in regular everyday conversation I don't think many people do .

Find a synonym for spade ? now is it a "Better" word than spade ?

[lofuji]

But David Crystal, honorary professor of linguistics at Bangor University in Wales, told The Sunday Times that experts simply did not understand the complexities of teen language and had judged it by their own standards.

“The real issue here is that people object to kids having a good vocabulary for hip-hop and not for politics," he said. "They have an articulate vocabulary for the kind of things they want to talk about. Few academics get anywhere near measuring that vocabulary.”

I don't use Facebook or Twitter, and I don't text, so I'm probably completely out of touch with teenspeak. I still think this academic is talking bollocks. I've read looked at a few teen blogs, and words like 'fluff' and 'candy floss' come immediately to mind. Everything is trivial and superficial as far as I can judge. "Articulate vocabulary" is conspicuously absent. You can probably read The Sun with a vocabulary of 800 words, but I bet you couldn't analyse the causes of terrorism or make an intelligent case for atheism with such a meagre lexicon at your disposal.

lofuji

[JimC]

But David Crystal, honorary professor of linguistics at Bangor University in Wales, told The Sunday Times that experts simply did not understand the complexities of teen language and had judged it by their own standards.

“The real issue here is that people object to kids having a good vocabulary for hip-hop and not for politics," he said. "They have an articulate vocabulary for the kind of things they want to talk about. Few academics get anywhere near measuring that vocabulary.”

I don't use Facebook or Twitter, and I don't text, so I'm probably completely out of touch with teenspeak. I still think this academic is talking bollocks. I've read looked at a few teen blogs, and words like 'fluff' and 'candy floss' come immediately to mind. Everything is trivial and superficial as far as I can judge. "Articulate vocabulary" is conspicuously absent. You can probably read The Sun with a vocabulary of 800 words, but I bet you couldn't analyse the causes of terrorism or make an intelligent case for atheism with such a meagre lexicon at your disposal.

lofuji

I agree. Impoverished language, impoverished mind...

[charlou]

The report should make up it's mind, either the skills of language are dying or most teenagers use some new vocabulary adults don't understand .

I probably don't use a lot more than 800 words in regular everyday conversation I don't think many people do .

Find a synonym for spade ? now is it a "Better" word than spade ?

Yep.

Yet another alarmist angle in an article. What a surprise. These people looked at teen text based interaction and base their conclusion on that alone?


My children use text speak in sms and internet communication with ease ... and they make more articulate use of language where and when it's necessary. One of my daughters (thirteen) has been writing a fictional story over the holidays which is so far in excess of 10,000 words. Another (24) makes heavy use of traditional written language in her studies. I don't think they're unusual.


I'm not saying that there aren't teens who are lacking in more advanced written communication skills, but what's new there?

[JimC]

The report should make up it's mind, either the skills of language are dying or most teenagers use some new vocabulary adults don't understand .

I probably don't use a lot more than 800 words in regular everyday conversation I don't think many people do .

Find a synonym for spade ? now is it a "Better" word than spade ?

Yep.

Yet another alarmist angle in an article. What a surprise. These people looked at teen text based interaction and base their conclusion on that alone?


My children use text speak in sms and internet communication with ease ... and they make more articulate use of language where and when it's necessary. One of my daughters (thirteen) has been writing a fictional story over the holidays which is so far in excess of 10,000 words. Another (24) makes heavy use of traditional written language in her studies. I don't think they're unusual.


I'm not saying that there aren't teens who are lacking in more advanced written communication skills, but what's new there?

I certainly would not say that a good ability to use "text speak" automatically leads to poor skills with traditional language - Nick is also good at both.

But for the group of teenagers who are totally immersed in that world, uninterested in school and with little parental input, it may make it harder to gain enough skills in using the wider and richer world of language, whether for employment purposes or analysing the world they live in...

A kind of cultural ghetto with its own pidgen..

[Deep Sea Isopod]

BREAKING NEWS:SUPERMARKETS CANT FIND QUALITY STAFF TO TAKE THEIR SHITTY WAGES.
If the survey sample was taken from Tesco employees 800 words is pretty good going. Where the fuck do they find so many knuckle draggers to work there anyway?

Poland.

Meanwhile, the real knuckle draggers can sit at home claiming disability benefits for having Depleted Vocabularyitis Syndrome, or some other made up illness.

[JimC]

BREAKING NEWS:SUPERMARKETS CANT FIND QUALITY STAFF TO TAKE THEIR SHITTY WAGES.
If the survey sample was taken from Tesco employees 800 words is pretty good going. Where the fuck do they find so many knuckle draggers to work there anyway?

Poland.

Meanwhile, the real knuckle draggers can sit at home claiming disability benefits for having Depleted Vocabularyitis Syndrome, or some other made up illness.

And sueing their teachers for not making them work harder...

[Thinking Aloud]

In other news...

Shock Report! Bad Weather Forces People To Help Neighbours

The recent snow and ice that has blanketed the UK and closed roads and airports has forced some people to make contact with their neighbours. A woman living in a remote house had to be assisted to her doctor's appointment by a farmer on his tractor because she was unable to drive there herself. Numerous other instances have been reported of people having to communicate verbally with each other, and assist with what would normally be day-to-day tasks in a physical way.

There is clearly an undercurrent of dissatisfaction that anyone should have to make special effort during the bad weather, and it is expected that compensation claims for hardship and stress will eventually be in the millions.

[charlou]

ahehehe

[lofuji]

In other news...

Shock Report! Bad Weather Forces People To Help Neighbours

The recent snow and ice that has blanketed the UK and closed roads and airports has forced some people to make contact with their neighbours. A woman living in a remote house had to be assisted to her doctor's appointment by a farmer on his tractor because she was unable to drive there herself. Numerous other instances have been reported of people having to communicate verbally with each other, and assist with what would normally be day-to-day tasks in a physical way.

There is clearly an undercurrent of dissatisfaction that anyone should have to make special effort during the bad weather, and it is expected that compensation claims for hardship and stress will eventually be in the millions.

[Thinking Aloud]

Worst part of it is that last week there was an item on the news about this, and the entire tone, from the interviews to the reporting, was that this was a bad thing, and (without saying it) that someone else should be sorting it out, and sparing everyone the inconvenience.

[FBM]

I once got hired on at a minimum security facility. During my orientation, the supervisor gave me instructions on how to conduct a fire drill. She showed me the fire alarm and said, "First you gotta pull this, then you gotta run down every hallway yelling, 'Evaluate the building!'."
I said, "Sorry?"
She repeated it exactly, so I said, "Do you mean 'evacuate' the building?"
She got huffy and said, "You know what I mean!"

Supervisor.