Cyber world- a spoiler of language?
The recent explosion of the social networking has revolutionized our world of communication and so has it altered our ways of communicating.
Our world has shrunk and be in any part of the world you are always connected to your loved ones. While we count the blessings of the cyber developments equally worrying is the cyber slang that is fast becoming a part of the much used languages in our daily lives.
All of us had many classes of English literature and grammar during our school and college but did you ever have a class of the new breed born out of English that is the cyber language or the text lingo? If not then you might find it difficult to mingle up with the young or the fast adopting category of people. Gone are the days of Shakespearean’s sophisticated English the modern breed of people have generated a whole new breed that breaks all the rules of the language. It is a slang that is mostly used in chatting, texting or other informal communication. Origin of the text lingo This new language seems to be originated a few decades back when we had telegraphs with restrictions on the word limit. And later the cell phones that came in our lives too permitted to the use of only 160 characters in a message. Back then it was out of our will and we had to squeeze in our words in a limited space but now it is more of an easy that is most chosen by the younger generation in communicating with their peers.
Why and who uses it?
This cyber slang finds use mostly in colleges between friends and peers in online chatting on social networking sites or in the short messaging services on the cell phones. A research by DCML showed that 84% parents admitted to receiving text messages from their children that they didn’t understand. I would say that I use it because I am overcome by laziness most of the times and to save my fingers from typing long words I seek respite in using the text lingo where I can omit up all the helping verbs, prepositions and articles. It saves the extra efforts I will have to make to write the correct grammar and complete words. Moreover with a shortage of pocket money it helps me to save my message usage. To make the most out of the limited spaces I often eat up half the word and keep it in minimals.
About the language
Unlike the language we learned in our schools the cyber language allows the following properties-
• Initializations, Reductions, Emoctions, Variations , Shortenings, Abbreviations.
• As emoctions are a part of the slang it makes the communication light hearted and often more expressive.
• Allows shortcuts that make it easy in usage.
• A single letter can be used to represent a whole word as ‘be’ can be written as ‘b’ and ‘we’ as ‘v’.
• Numbers can be used to write meaningful words like ‘today’ can be written as ‘2day’ and ‘anyone’ as ‘any1’.
• Out of the words used in cyber slangs some have come out of the box and often used in regular language now for example LOL that stands for Laughing out Loud
Should we worry?
The use of text lingo has often deteriorated the written language among students. It sometimes may lead to misunderstandings in communication as there is no rule to be followed. The language experts have often claimed that usage of text lingo too often may spoil your knowledge of spellings, punctuations and grammar. The increasing popularity of the language is evident from the incident that surfaced in India when in 2006 a school teacher was shocked to see her student write a whole essay using the text language in her English examination. It is not the single case where the cyber slang has made its way to the education world. There have been many reports where cyber slang has often surfaced in formal writings. Ultimately the students have to enter the competitive world where in one requires strong communication skills and that includes written language too. So with the advent of technology we have its ill effects too that we should avoid making a part of our daily communication tools.
With a low literacy rate that we hope to increase in the coming years it is necessary that we not make things worse by going the other way. The cyber world is full of knowledge and has opened up numerous ways of learning for us let us use this cool technology to learn and not spoil our language.
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