A Language Developed on the Internet
All throughout school, your English teacher taught you the correct spellings of words, how to formulate proper sentences, and the difference between a colon and a semi-colon. Then, you bought a computer and a cell phone for your children. Suddenly, you cannot understand a word of the text messages they send you.
With the rise of the Internet and text messaging, the way people communicate has changed. The young people who have grown up using these written methods of instant communication needed an faster way of typing their messages, so they developed what is known as ‘text speak’.
In general, text speak is simply removing vowels from a single word or abbreviating a phrase to the first letters of each word. Over the past ten years, since text messaging began, much standardization has occurred. There are hundreds other abbreviations that qualify as text speak, ranging from easy to figure out (gr8) to indecipherable (BTWITIAILWU, ‘by the way I think I am in love with you’).
Surprisingly, using a letter to represent a full word in writing did not begin with computers. What we call text speak dates back to poetry in the early 1800s. There are at least three examples of 19th century poems that use phrases such as “I wrote 2 U B 4” and other abbreviations. Emblematic poetry, as they called it then, was seen as a very clever way to write poems. It obviously did not cross over into popular speech at the time.
When text messaging first began on December 3rd, 1992, the first text was sent from a computer to a mobile phone. The message said ‘Merry Christmas’. In the twenty years since then, texting has become ubiquitous, requiring cool new technology whenever it is available. In 1996, the Nokia Communicator 9000 was the first full-keyboard cell phone and with its release texting became easier and faster than ever. If you are looking to upgrade to a full-keyboard phone to more easily send text messages, the mobile computer support technicians at Rescuecom can advise you on what to buy.
Full-keyboard phones also allowed more people to send text messages without using text speak and the debate over the legitimacy of text speak surged anew. Many people believe it is killing the English language, while the other side says that new ways of communicating are beautiful and artistic. Whichever side of the argument they support, nearly everyone has a cell phone with a text-messaging plan. Text speak is neither a curse on the English language nor a blessing, it is simply the reality of life in the digital age. Use it or not – that choice is yours – but be prepared to understand it if you need to.
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Filed under: david milman, Internet, Internet Security, mobile phones, rescuecom, smartphone