Language, Rising

So, here is a question for you:

What do these four common entries mean? "b4," "ur," "2" and "wata."

Okay, if you got them right, what about these? wit, da and dat (*)

If this is Greek to you (as it is to me), welcome to the world of text messaging. This form of communication is sweeping societies around the world (Japan, China, Europe, the U.S.) among young people raised in the age of the ubiquitous cell phone.

Never before in history has a communications technology like this one penetrated human societies so rapidly. While older folks are still getting the hang of email, or IM, these phrases from the compulsive IMers and text messagers are creeping into every day language.

If Shakespeare were alive today, he would be hard at work documenting these linguistic developments, and integrating them into his writings.

All too soon, I suspect, we in the west will find ourselves abandoning capital letters and spacing to indicate our names. Thus, I will be davidweir, for example, and you'll be whatever your given name may be, such as yomamafahatsalot. Whatever.

It was nice bumping into Tanya this morning and exchanging warm hugs. She told me she is struck by how sped up life has become just in the past few years. Friends send her a text message and get anxious if she doesn't answer quickly.

But she has a real job (teaching first and second graders) so she often cannot get to her friends' messages until after school ends for the day.

Another friend, Christine, tells me that she thinks IMing with your S.O. is dangerous, because it all too easily can degenerate into a fight.

After all, the biggest fallacy from our childhood was that old rhyme: "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me!"

Bullshit. Words are like daggers. "You look fat." How much blood has that phrase drawn, here in the land of the idealism of anorexia?

Yes, a new language is emerging, yet many of our contemporaries will remain helplessly oblivious. But I'm sure of this much: The spellcheck program I try to always remember to run over my blog posts before you, dear reader, are subjected to them, will one day have to be overhauled to recognize the new "words" that will be as common as ants.

LOL!

(*)used in place of with, the and that.