By Reuben Abati
I get
confused these days reading many of the posts on social media, and text
messages sent through cell phones, because of the kind of new English that
young people now write. The English language is without doubt quite dynamic. In
the last 200 years, it has lent itself to many innovations, as cultural,
religious, and situational codes have transformed the language and extended the
dictionary, with new words and idioms.
The kind of
new English being written by twitter and what’s app users, particularly young
people is however so frightening and lamentable, because it is beginning to
creep into regular writing. Texting and tweeting is producing a generation of
users of English, (it is worse that they are using English as a second
language), who cannot write grammatically successful sentences. I was
privileged to go through some applications that some young graduates submitted
for job openings recently and I was scared.
This new
group of English users does not know the difference between a comma and a
colon. They have no regard for punctuation. They mix up pronouns, cannibalize
verbs and adverbs, ignore punctuation; and violate all rules of lexis and
syntax. They seem to rely more on sound rather than formal meaning. My fear is
that a generation being brought on twitter, Facebook, instagram and what’s app
English is showing a lack of capacity to write meaningful prose, or communicate
properly or even think correctly.
To an older
generation who had to go through the rigour of being told to write proper
English, and getting punished severely for speaking pidgin or vernacular or for
making careless mistakes of grammar and punctuation, the kind of meta-English
now being written by young people can be utterly confusing. The irony is that
it makes sense to the young ones, and they can conduct long conversations in
this strange version of the English language. I’d not be surprised if someday a
novel gets written in this new English, which seems like a complete
bastardization.
You may
have come across the meta-English that I am trying to describe. It is English
in sound, but in appearance it has been subjected to the punishment of
excessive abbreviation, compression and modification. Hence, in place of the
word “for”, you are likely to see “4” ,
and so the word “forget” becomes “4get”, or “4git”, “fortune” is written as
“4tune”, “forever” as “4eva”. The word “see” has been pruned down to a single
alphabet “C”, same with “you” now rendered as “u”. In effect, you are likely to
read such strange things as “cu” or “cya” meaning “see you.”
Some other
words have suffered similar fate: “straight” is now written as “Str8”, “first”
as “fess”; “will” as “wee” (I can’t figure out why), “house” is now “haus”;
“help” has been reduced to “epp”; (“who have you epped?”) instead of the phrase
“kind of”, what you get is “kinda”, “money” is simply “moni.”, the computer
sign ”@” has effectively replaced the word “at”; “come” is now “cum”, the
conjunction “and” is represented with an “n” or the sign &, “that” is now
“dat”, “temporary” is likely to be written as “temp”, “are” as “r”, “your” as
“ur” “to” as “2” ,
“take” as “tk.” In place of “thank you”, you are likely to find “tank u”,
“with” is now “wit” or “wif”, and “sorry” is commonly written as “sowie”. I
have also seen such expressions as “Hawayu?” (“How are you?”), or “Wia r d u?”
(“where are the you?”). The you? The me? The us?
