Evolution of the English language
I was very amused by my brother's recent post on his blog so I have copied it and pasted it on this post. His blog is linked to mine (click 'retrospect' though it's now renamed to 'virtual insanity') if you would like to visit it in the future.
Courtesy of Eugene Lim Zhi Yong aged 17 years 10 months:
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I was going through several MSN nicknames, blog entries, my own archives, and I kind of see some form of evolution here. How tainted our English language has become! It becomes a sad tragedy and of course, a hilarious one as well. I'm not showing off my style or anything, just that for me, it's time to refine the language.
We see blogging becoming so conversational. You should see how people type nowadays... It has become really disturbing. Abbreviations are easier for understanding, though sometimes it can get pathetically out of hand. The worse are those who really abbreviate 99% of a sentence through SMS language. We can't be THAT DESPERATE to save SMS space right? Eg. wt tym cn u cm ltr 4 e mtg?
And word replacement is an even worse... THING. Common word replacements:COME= CUMSelf-explanatory. Kind of weird isn't it?
One SMS I received was this:
"i at shell now. with [someone's name]. cumming."
that was definitely weird. hmm.
We see words evolve incredibly. You to U to u to eu to (X)eu(X) where X is a number of E's or U's you want to type. Darling to dar to darh to darhdarh BLAHBLAHBLAH. This romance thing is getting kind of mushy and damaged.
Typing styles, damaged because of grammatical mistakes. Don't ever do caps small... What I mean is HeLlO cRapPie pPl iSn'T it CuTe 2 SEe wAt I tYpInG wOrX?By the way, what the hell is WorX?
I admit, for myself, I used a lot of abbreviations in what I converse, via MSN or SMS. I seem to have a fond liking for the spelling of what to be wad. The other common ones are like tmr for tomorrow and the occasional u for you. Seriously, I have had occasions in writing essays where I really write wad for what. it just proves the damage it can do. I just hope students don't actually start writing "'eu cheated mi!' he said."
Well, today marks a day where I'm bored and I happen to be attacking the evolved Singlish. Spare me, I wanted to scold something, and subjects like this cheer me up also when I attack them.
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posted by Jan at 12:18 am
6 Comments:
I am quite impressed by your bro's command of English... feeling darn stressed now typing. I believe I fall into his category of conversational bloggers without a care for proper english.
Cum, strike that, come to think of it, I believe most of us do too. eg. "the long overdue pics from G's birthday" <-- *gasp* Jan you're doing it too!! =D
12:27 pm
Haha! Yes Sue! I fully realise I'm guilty of that! But I've seen those blogs where people write in full proper Queen's English and/or use huge bombastic words and frankly those aren't a joy to read. It makes me want to check dictionary.com every other 5 words and after a while, who wants to read something that makes them feel stupid? Heh!
12:44 pm
Queen's english is rather scary to use for blogging, especially for Singaporeans? It would seem too unnatural, so basically I guess I'm somehow comfortable with the standards I have been taught with in school. CRIKEY!
9:20 pm
CRIKEY ain't Queen's English. It's more like...Steve Irwinian English =P
Love Eugene's post. Cus I'm always mentally ranting about this whenever I trawl through forums. There's only so much of "~~~^^Mi is yoUr QQ grl 4 lYfe!!! Eu r teh bestest kk~~~ ^^" and its ilk before I get a major headache trying to read.
Incidentally, don't you think it takes longer trying to decipher a whole sentence made up of nothing but short-form words and acronyms? And isn't coming shorter and easier to type than cumming? >=|
10:53 am
To be fair, a lot of school English teachers these days don't even have a proper command of the language, much less know the difference between Queen's and bastardised American "English" (and I use the word "English" there in the loosest sense).
Spelling notwithstanding, even how to pronounce simple words like "vitamin" and "reservoir" and...and...AHHHH!
10:55 am
I see that a few of you have taken an interest in this post eh?
Chris is right. It's a heck a lot harder to figure out the weird ass short forms/acronyms as opposed to writing English in its original form. I'm not criticizing most short forms, coz everyone's instinctively lazy (like me hehehe) so shortening of words are still moderately acceptable as long it's understandable. 'Cumming' looks wrong, but what peeves me the most is fucking mIxEd cApS cOz iT iS jUsT sO fUcKiN HaRd tO tYpE aNd rEaD! Argh!
11:34 am
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