SMS LANGUAGE AND ITS EFFECT ON LANGUAGE COMPETENCY

In today’s technology oriented world, there is a mobile phone in everyone’s hand. Laptops and I-Pads are more common than books. The new generation is fond of playing games; not outside as they used to, but in a virtual world. It is thus not a surprise that the way people now communicate has changed as well. Instead of letters, telegrams and notes, people in the modern world exchange messages nowadays through sms, BBM, email and status updates. All of these involve the use of a special new language known as ‘textese’ or sms language…

Keeping the messages short and to-the-point, has always been ‘IN’. In the past people used telegrams to send brief messages which used only the words essential to make the message understandable. The sentences were bare of all extra words, punctuations and ever prepositions. But not everyone could send a telegram; there were special machines for it not accessible to everyone and one needed a telegram operator to write the message.

If one wanted to tell a friend by telegram, that he had found the perfect life partner, whom he considered the best companion for the rest of his life and whom he wanted to marry, at the same time inviting the friend to the wedding ceremony, the telegram would look like this:

‘FOUND TRUE LOVE COME TO WEDDING…….!!

Today mobiles and computers have made it even easier to share such news and internet is full of Apps and software to make the messages more personalized and interesting. Also there is much more of message sharing than ever before. Everyone shares everything with everyone else. If you go to dinner, there is a status update; if you fall, there is an update; if you go to the bathroom, there is an update!! With a smiley of course .

So what exactly is such an excess exchange of information is doing to our language and our brains?? For one thing it is making our words and sentences even shorter. If I wrt lk ths, I knw u wl undrstnd! This is what I mean by sms language or ‘textese’. We drop the vowels, we throw away the prepositions and we skip any sort of punctuation. Viola!! What is left of the language is ‘sms language’!!!!

That is not all. Sometimes entire sentences and phrases are packed into smaller packages of ‘abbreviations’, which are then used excessively. For instance, take ‘LOL’. Contrary to what my father thinks, ‘LOL’ is not an abbreviation for ‘Lollipop’, those sweets at the end of short plastic sticks every child loves. It is an abbreviated form of ‘laugh out loud’, like ‘hey dude, u are so funny that I am laughing out loud’. In reality, no one is laughing out that loud, but it is used just to make the others feel better about themselves!

Similar is the case with ‘tc’. Everyone now knows that ‘TC’ means ‘ticket checker’ (thanks to a certain train movie), but in sms speak it means ‘take care’. It could also mean ‘too cute’ or ‘that’s classy’, but no! In sms language it means ‘take care’ and that’s that!! No one can change it.

• As far as I remember : AFAIR• Love :LUV• Today : 2day• Before : bf4• See u : C U• At : @• As soon as possible : ASAP• At a moment :ATM• thanks : THNX• You’re on your own :YOYO• Today : 2day• Please : Plz

• About : Abt• Are : R• Because : B’cos• For : 4• In : N• Is : S• Morning : Morn• Night : Ni8• To : 2• What : Wat• Night: n8• Great: g8

How these abbreviations evolved is another debate altogether, but for now let’s presume that most of these abbreviations are widely used and understood by most, like:

OMG!! So many?!

But this is just a preview; the real list is much longer and getting still longer day by day.

So how is this new language affecting the old one? Many recent researches in Pakistan and all over the world have shown concern that this new sms speak and ‘textese’ is negatively affecting our formal language skills. They say that people, especially students, use sms speak in their written work so much that it is hard for them to write normally. Students even use it in their examinations and formal assignments to the concern of teachers everywhere. Even now as I write this article, I want to just skip the whole spelling thing and punctuations and just get to the point. Wd b so ez!! ;)

The following table shows the titles of some such researches. Yu can google them if you want to read them yourself ( which I doubt ).

• Salia Tagliamonte and Derek Denis (2008) : “LINGUISTIC RUIN? LOL! INSTANT MESSAGING AND TEEN LANGUAGE”

• David crystal (2008) : “Txting frNd or foe?”• Guy merchant (2001) : “Teenagers in Cyber Space”• David crystal (2005) “The Scope of Internet Linguistic”• Muhammad Shaban Rafi(2002): “SMS Text Analysis: Language, Gender and Current

Practices”• Abdullah , Mardziah Hayati(2003) article “The Impact of electronic communication on

Writing”• Wood, Plester, Bowyer (2008) “Texting and Literacy”• Anupam khatpalia “The effects of Text messaging”

Some of these researches say that sms language is destroying the students’ writing skills and even writing ability. Some say that the students have become over fond of the use of non-standardized abbreviations, reduced endings and linguistic shortcuts. Also in sms language auxiliary verbs [is, am, are etc.] are completely ignored and sometimes even verbs and pronouns are ignored (e.g. ‘going 2 dinner’; which means ‘I am going to take dinner’). Another minus for the sms language is the use of numerals instead of letters. ‘gr8’ and ‘gn8’ are commonly used instead of the longer ‘great’ and ‘goodnight’. This seriously distorts the Standard English language, and students begin to ignore working on learning and improving their spellings, grammar and pronunciation.

On the other hand, some advocates of sms language are of the opinion that the more students write, the better it is for them. Writing more gives them the confidence to use and manipulate the language and create interesting new ways to form sentences. These personalized ways of writing involve and engage students in studies and written work. It also develops communicative skills and language proficiency, even if the spellings are not directly addressed. This in turn increases the literacy level of the population who use English in sms. For academic purposes, sms short terms and abbreviations help in effective note taking and preparing rough drafts.

It is evident that there would forever remain disagreement as to which of the above two views is the more convincing one. Those are in favor would never admit to its negative effects and vice versa. But there is also a third view about sms language that is fast emerging and gaining many supporters.

According to this new approach, sms or texting is not written language at all! Surprised? Let me explain.

According to linguist John McWhorter, man used language primarily through speech or talking. Writing is a skill which was developed very late. He illustrates this point with an example; if man has been using language for 24 hours, writing only came along at 11:07 PM!! Hence written language came at a very late stage in language development and is not such a critical aspect of language. It is inevitable that new changes in language use would keep on occurring. Texting is one such change.

In the past, man did not have the ability to communicate instantly through written language. Letters and telegrams took very long to reach the recipient and a dialogue could not be conducted through it. All this changed with the coming of the mobile phones and texting. Now text messaging and information exchange allows people to connect to others instantaneously. Chat and sms are used to continuously communicate through language almost as if the two persons are talking. Even more than two persons can be involved in the same sms stream or thread. These kinds of texts involve using language that is closer to speech than it is to what we know as written language. It lacks capital letters and punctuations and formal sentence structures. But if one gives it a thought, neither do people pay attention to these things while talking. Do you ever pause to consider where to use a ‘full stop’ or ‘capital letter’ in oral speech? No, no one does.

In this sense texting is similar to oral speech. It shares many features of spoken language. Therefore linguists like McWhorter call texting ’fingered speech’. It is speech but the new technology has allowed man to use this speech through the use of written letters. This is the next step in language evolution. It increases the cognitive abilities of the users and is almost as useful as learning a new language or bilingualism.

Texting is almost an unstoppable phenomenon and its use is increasing day by day. Linguists have therefore termed it as a miracle happening right in front of us. They say that this phase in language development will be looked back by people 20 or 30 years down the line as the birth and origin of a new aspect of language. We must therefore embrace it, study it and incorporate it in our language repertoire.

Of course students and people in general should be made aware of the differences between texting and formal writing. The two should be dealt with as separate subjects and not mixed together. Still, who knows; may be in the near future there would be a new subject taught in our educational institutions called ‘TXTSPK’…!

Let’s wait and see .

Percentage of kids using sms language in their work