Personally, I look at old English and find it quite beautiful. More or less I guess that's a preference. Anyway, because of the texting and computer age, English is degenerating and fast.

Things are abbreviated like never before, ty, idk, brb, bbl, ly2 etc. Also with just words such as "u" and "r" and "2". I personally find it well... retarded. It's one thing when you have a smooshed keyboard on a cell phone and abbreviating makes things faster(that actually makes sense!). However when you have a computer or a cell phone with a full keyboard, why not use it?! I think part of it is this problem with laziness in my generation(I'm talking about people who are currently 12-22).

My point is, just putting "u" or "r" is plain lazy. to write the word out takes two extra taps of a finger. 2 TAPS OF A FINGER! Is it so much to ask that if people are going to be writing on the computer in English they use ACTUAL ENGLISH instead of the shortening chat speak, leet crap?

Ah, but the Old English you're reading came from the educated class. If you were to hold a conversation with a peasant during the Middle Ages, or even a coal miner from early America, you would encounter a very different style of language.

The same holds true today. We have prolific poets and authors who still carry on the tradition of formal writing and speech. But if you're looking at the laid back work of teenagers or even the informal speech of a professional, you'll see something very different.

Yes, our English language is constantly evolving. But I think it's a tad unfair to call it degenerative. Don't get me wrong, I hate chatspeak too, but there are worse things in the world. If anything, the Internet makes it possible for young people to get even more practice reading and writing. I just can't believe in the criticism that chatspeak is impeding the growth of our language.

Have you ever heard of the book Txtng: the Gr8 Db8? You might like it.

Don't get me wrong, It's not that I hate like a subculture or something. In fact, I have a book by Lauren Miracle where that's all it is, texting and instant messages. And as I said, I don't really have a problem with it when it comes to texting or even instant messaging. My problem is when people come to forums or are trying to communicate with others and they use chatspeak.

My sister got a lower grade on her english paper the other day because she accidently wrote "u" instead of "you." u as a replacement in english is incorrect.

And personally I find the shortening of words like that part of the laziness of the computer generation. I'm not saying everyone in the generation is lazy, it's just becoming more and more normal. Which I think is a big problem. Yes the internet is good for plenty of things including the reading and writing, but I don't understand how chatspeak would help kids read or write or type. They're learning incorrect habits.

I think that chatspeak is more of an effect, not a cause. Kids find chatspeak to be much easier because they possess under developed literacy skills. But their under developed literacy skills don't come from chatspeak, the problem runs much deeper.

By the time most 5 year olds enter kindergarten, they're already behind. Their parents didn't read to them, they haven't learned the alphabet, they can't recognize writing, etc. So right from an early age, teachers are trying to play catch-up and get kids to the level they should be at. But because of the way that our educational system is set up, more and more kids are getting passed without reaching the right levels of comprehension.

I think that we just have to ask why chatspeak is so prominent. Have kids actually learned the correct habits to begin with? Or are they just using the knowledge available to them and speaking in a language that they can understand? If your sister just slipped up and accidently put "u" in her paper, that's one thing. But if a student can't recognize the word "you" and has to express themselves by putting the phonetic letter down, that's another. One is the case of a slip up (we all have them, that's what spell check is for), and the other is a case of insufficient education.

Ugh... I understand where you're coming from however, I'm going to just chalk it up to "wrong place, wrong time".

I use chatspeak in chatrooms because I don't type very fast (I can type without looking at the keyboard though) and conversations in a chatroom are FAST. I use chatspeak when I text because I don't have enough character space to type out every single word. That's the right time and the right place for that stuff.

Now, I can't see people writing their papers, home/classwork and journals (some English classes do these) in chatspeak. It has no place there. There's enough time to get everything out all prim and proper. People have unlimited character space. You can go back and edit as necessary when it comes to forums by the way (I'm the type to edit whenever I see I made a mistake).

There's a difference between abbreviations and dialect. For example, you say that English is degenerating. To what degree do you mean? Is the written world of English degenerating, or is it the verbal language of English? Okay--let's say it is this idea that verbal language of English is dying. But there is a difference between the verbal and the written ways. If you had asked Tolkien to speak as he normally would--would it be the same as his academic works? No.

You mention chat-speak and I suppose I understand where you are coming from, when I was a kid I was upset as well. But, wouldn't you say that as long as the children/people are writing, that's good? You can fix your mistakes. And you can always change how you write. Ever hear of word vomit? Brain storming just random things. Does it matter what you write? No. And as far as I'm concerned, you can fix that. That's how I feel about it. Is it lazy? Yes--but you can fix laziness, you can't really fix creative thought, though. As long as it's there we can mature it. Start with shit--end with golden bricks.

I think language is so beautiful, whether it's English, Russian, Spanish, etc. I guess I feel like a lot of people in the American don't care anymore. Logically, I know that's necessarily it. The English language is constantly changing. I'm just so impassioned about it that it's frustrating.

One thing that gets me is that a lot of teachers in American schools are either not teaching certain parts of our language or are teaching them completely incorrectly. I'm in Composition II for college credit right now and it's just amazing. In Comp I, I was pretty confident about my English capability, and I watched as others around me struggled. However, in Comp II, I'm learning things that was never even mentioned in my former schooling that should have been common sense. It's even worse when someone from a foreign country is better at English than most of the students who have lived in America their entire lives, including myself.

I do have to agree that the chatspeak can be pretty annoying. I used to partake in it when I was younger, but I kind of grew out of it. I use a lot of emoticons and say things like "lol" often, but other than that, I greatly prefer actually writing things the way they're supposed to be. But I also agree that there's a time and place for it. I suppose it's not so bad to use that kind of language on the Internet, but people shouldn't be writing like that in things like reports, which I've heard often happens. And I suppose that would be a point for me, Ryokushin. Yes, it's great that people are writing, but when they're using "lol" in a report for school, there's a problem. When you're finding out that what you were taught in elementary, middle, and high school was wrong, there's a problem. I think, though, that it's a problem created both by students and teachers.

I don't mind the 'lol's' so much. I freaking HATE the 'r's' and 'u's' though.

Chat speak sucks.

You mention chat-speak and I suppose I understand where you are coming from, when I was a kid I was upset as well. But, wouldn't you say that as long as the children/people are writing, that's good? You can fix your mistakes. And you can always change how you write. Ever hear of word vomit? Brain storming just random things. Does it matter what you write? No. And as far as I'm concerned, you can fix that. That's how I feel about it. Is it lazy? Yes--but you can fix laziness, you can't really fix creative thought, though. As long as it's there we can mature it. Start with shit--end with golden bricks.

I understand your saying that you don't think we all should have to write perfectly all the time. I get that. I write shorthand for notes and I use shortenings that I understand for speed reasons. I understand for limited areas, when your texting without a full keyboard or even in a chatroom where things move quickly. I understand that. What makes me frustrated is when people are writing using all this chatspeak on a forum, where it's not to be quick notes and they have a full keyboard. When posting on a forum, I find that posts are much more meaningful when well thought out and well written. I guess I understand in the hang outs, but otherwise it's annoying and frustrating.

To Ryo's comment...

But, wouldn't you say that as long as the children/people are writing, that's good?

No, I don't agree with you. If people are going to be on a forum then they should be expected to be literate. There is a very big difference between writing for beneficial purposes(such as novels, books, journals, essays etc.) and writing for social and conversational purposes. While communication is important, I would hardly call constant chat speak writing good.

Hayzel, I'm going to add onto your comment.

A very big reason as to why it's simply NOT okay for people to throw writing completely out the window and use chatspeak is that once you learn it one way it's VERY HARD to learn and stick to the correct way. Yes, you can always go back and fix it, but why go through the trouble of learning wrong when you could learn right?

There's a difference between being able to write your words out and using chatspeak to talk to your friends, and only being able to write in chatspeak and struggling with writting correctly when it counts. Lots of kids nowadays memorize chatspeak simply because they can't spell out the words themselves. Afterall, memorizing 'bc' is a lot easier than memorizing 'because,' and memorizing 'ur' is a lot easier than memorizing 'your' and 'you're' and applying them correctly.

When you see chatspeak start to pop up in school essays and writing, you have a problem, and it's a porblem that shouldn't be there in the first place. Anyone who writes in chatspeak to their school work should get an immediate F, especially in middle school and high school, where kids are old enough to KNOW how to write correctly.

Originally Posted by SugarRos

When you see chatspeak start to pop up in school essays and writing, you have a problem, and it's a porblem that shouldn't be there in the first place. Anyone who writes in chatspeak to their school work should get an immediate F, especially in middle school and high school, where kids are old enough to KNOW how to write correctly.

This applies to college as well, as sad as that is. In one of my classes, we worked in groups to put together a presentation. Each person made a few Powerpoint slides for their section, and then gave them to me and I put them all together in order in one file that we turned in. I had to redo one girl's slides: she had written them all in chatspeak. I was appalled at the number of times she used "lol," especially since this was for a serious issue for an ethics class and not really a funny one.

Using chatspeak or l33t speak for texting or instant messaging - hell, even for taking notes instead of using another form of shorthand - isn't that big of a deal. But when students start to think that it's okay to write in such a way and turn it in for a grade? That's when teachers should start handing out failing grades.

*sigh* Perhaps fortunately, I never had this problem myself. I just don't like texting. Whenever I had to, I used up all the space writing in complete sentences. That takes too much time when you don't have a full keyboard, so I just don't do it anymore.

I just did a paper on this for school! I really see your point on how language has taken a backseat to a false language.

When you look at the definition of "language" it really leaves no room for there to be such a thing as a "false language".

Going back to the point of Old English: I'm not really sure it can be used as an example. I admit I could be wrong about this, but from what I understand most Old English didn't even have standardized, uniform English as we know it now. The spelling of "sea" to us is simply "sea". However when Old English was used "sea" could also be "see" or "se" as there was no standardized spelling of the word. I don't think standardized English with an idea of "correct" spelling came around until Middle English, if not later.
Again, I'm not 100% sure it was Old English that was like this. I could be getting Old English and Middle English mixed up.

I agree with Knerd. I really, really dislike chatspeak, but I consider it a personal distaste. I don't think it's going to be the downfall of the language, though. The only time I would begin to consider it a problem is if there were no longer consequences for using it in formal writing. The fact that teachers still fail you (mark you down, whatnot) is, to me, a sign that this isn't going to be destroying the language. What's more likely to change the language, I think, is the acceptance of words like "bogus" and "dude" and other such slang. I don't consider it a bad thing (I admit to using "dude" far more than I have any excuse to), but I think it's going to change our language (and has) far more than chatspeak will.

The degeneration of language is, as Knerd mentions, a symptom. Parents aren't reading to their students -- apparently the average person doesn't even read one entire book every year. Teachers assume that students learned English either before coming to elementary school, or will learn it next year -- and the focus is so heavy on standardized tests, and math/science scores, that teaching grammar simply falls by the wayside.

I just read a published academic essay, part of a large collection of essays on music in science fiction films, which misspelled "canon" -- as in, a canon of important works, or the "Tolkien canon." That kind. It was spelled C-A-N-N-O-N. WTF? In a published scholarly essay??

As to chatspeak, I've actually noticed it decreasing over the years. Maybe it's that the people I text are getting better phones with full keyboards, maybe it's that I'm moving in an older generation now, but I haven't seen as much of it as I used to. And I certainly plan to teach my own children, and students I have in my classes, to use proper English. I take off points on essays even for colloquialisms.

Oh, and another note: several people I know who are amazing writers are also amazing speakers -- they often speak the way they write, or at least in a similar way. I can hear semicolons, paragraphs, organized sections, in their everyday speech.