Txt has eroded Eng

Word choice was once socially meaningful. It could distinguish the learned from the ignorant, gentlemen from cads, and unmask a pretender.

Now that abbreviations and substitutions are becoming acceptable even in official communications (thanks to e-mail and text), English is eroding faster than mud in a tsunami, LOL. As an Associated Press article in The Press described, people are no longer just texting in acronyms; they're speaking in them. Language is getting FUBAR - fouled (or another word) up beyond all recognition.

Maybe I'm prematurely an old fogey, but doesn't preserving language matter? It's getting to the point that native English speakers know less about their own language than do those who learn it as a foreign tongue. Slang I understand better, and that was bad enough.

Uniform use of language is practical; communication is broader and more successful when the correct language is known before employing substitutions and shortcuts. These depend on location and experience, BTW (by the way), so they vary.

Slang has been around since the days of animism, a belief which includes the idea that words have power beyond the objects they literally represent. Even so, slang is a matter of context and thus ripe for misunderstanding.

Fanny is a fine example. Originally just a woman's name, fanny degenerated into a term that refers to the buttocks. Don't use it that way in England; it's become a taboo for the female genitalia. The nickname for Richard is a similar example, although I have never heard why. Somehow "funky," which centuries ago meant stinky, became "cool," and grass became a drug. The latter is an example of clipping; marijuana used to be called "laughing grass."

Which brings me back to txt-talk. Idk. Imo (not that my opinion changes things) it just doesn't feel the same to hear "ILY" instead of I love you.

W/e - whatever.

Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. E-mail [email protected]. Thx.