I H8 TXTSPK ALOL

Yes, I hate text speak (txtspk). I am probably one of those few people in the world who insist on writing complete sentences even while SMSing/texting on cell phones. I agree every character is precious and it makes complete sense to abbreviate messages so that you get charged for only one message. But why do I have to read txtspk sentences in emails? NO ONE IS CHARGING YOU FOR ANYTHING. WRITE COMPLETE WORDS, LET ALONE SENTENCES. And what really irritates me is when I see a liberal use of replacing “th” with “d”. Look man, are you trying to be cool? Because it’s not working. No, it really isn’t. And you are not gaining anything from misspelling things. It’s totally arbitrary and it is not any kind of reason for celebration or show off.

Fr exmple how wud u lk 2 read da rest of dis post in dis abyssmal form of xprshn? It tuk me forvr 2 write dis sntnce. English is 2G2B4G. @TEOTD I knw u r g8ng u r msg acrss but dis is nt pr8y. K gtg nw. Show me the English ▼

For example how would you like to read the rest of this post in this abyssmal form of expression? It took me forever to write this sentence. English is too good to be forgotten. At the end of the day, I know you are getting your message across but this is not pretty. OK, got to go now.

It was late 2006 when New Zealand announced that it is OK if students used text-speak in their examinations as long as they showed an understanding of what was being asked of them. And that decision got many a bee in many a bonnet. The NZ qualifications authority apparently were asked “u mst b joking. or r u smkin smthng?” I was initially wondering that probably no one really wants txtspk to exist because it ruins academic writing. Turns out there are ongoing debates where educationalists are fighting over whether txtspk should be allowed or not…

The first *serious casualty* of txtspk is grammar. Well, grammatically speaking, they are trolls… but dramatically speaking, they pretty much convey the message. Let’s be honest. Languages have evolved a lot from what they were several hundred years back. They have always converged towards ease of communication and understanding. And that’s probably why Latin is no longer spoken by anyone. But will this lead to txtspk being the ‘talk of the town’? Can it actually become a colloquial language?

Nevertheless, ryting lyk dis irritates da hell outta ma sanity.

You might be wondering what on earth ALOL is. The reason behind this actually cracked me up. So, LOL is ‘Laughing out loud’ and ALOL is ‘Actually laughing out loud’. It arose from the fact that some people while chatting on IM or texting on cell phones never really laughed out loud even if they punched in “LOL” on their screens. So they wanted to draw the distinction between just LOLing and Actually-LOLing. ALOL. On that note… I came up with a self-explanatory graph here – the latest in Thoughts in 2D.

PS: I thought it should be text speech – but I really don’t know why it’s called text speak.
PPS: I required a bit of asking around to know what’s new in txtspk. Looks like my age does not permit usage of txtpsk.