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[Below is the original script. But a few changes may have been made during the recording of this audio podcast.]
OMG, roflol, ttyl, brb, l8r, lmao, tmlae (the most ludicrous abbreviation ever)...these cryptic creations, as many of you know, are examples of Short Message Service Language, perhaps one of the fastest growing dialects in the world right now.
AKA: SMS, textese, chatspeak is the slang that shortens English into phonetic bits—sometimes images made from punctuation—so that we can send meaningful messages via mobile phones.
In 2008 people sent 2.3 trillion messages, a 150 percent increase since 2000, according to Newsweek. Punctuation, capitalization, grammar and vowels are tossed aside for creations that are often unrecognizable abbreviations of real words. Numbers often replace letters.
Critics say SMS leads to sloppiness, masks dyslexia, and essentially signals the death of the English language.
But research does not support the critics.
A study released yesterday in the journal Reading and Writing found no evidence that texting had any impact on spelling ability.
Forty subjects from 12 to 17 years old were asked to save all their text messages for one week. Then they took a standardized spelling test. Turns out that if you’re a good speller of the Queen’s English you’re also a good speller in textese. Conversely, if you’re a poor speller academically you make more errors in chatspeak. And those who used more abbreviations when texting tended to be better spellers of standard English.
The researchers suggest that chatspeak is a complex, innovative language. And they added that using and translating any new language requires concentration and creativity—and is a real brain workout.
It seems surprising, bt itz 4 real dud.
—Christie Nicholson
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25 Comments
Add CommentI am afraid I disagree totally with the findings...my own experience has been that young people (ages 17-25) do NOT know how to spell correctly, nor are they able to use contractions properly. Most of them can't READ above a 5th grade level either. I also see a trend to confuse vowels---substituting "e" for "a" for instance, in such words as "then" and "than". Either the test subjects were deliberately more conscious of their spelling since they were participating in a survey, or the standard/s on the test did not take these factors into account. Texting is the beginning of the end for the American English language.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe time period is only for one week, which i think is way too short. I agree with navy66 that the test subjects were also likely to be more conscious of how they spell. I think in the long run, there will be bad effects of texting in spelling, grammar and reading. Texting in short forms can also lead to young people having short attention spans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe society is a living organism that breaths, eats and defecates like any other organism. Pretty much like a language, which is another living organism that keeps societys rhythm and grows and modifies with it, the trends (texting/SMSing) also denote the state of health of a particular society. The outcome is not encouraging and if trends and language express our state of health, I am sorry to tell you: we are sick.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn "1984", George Orwell foresaw that excessive usage of short words would soon lead to incapacity of using the mind at its full extent. He called it the Newspeak . Briefly: replacing the already consecrated terms with their encrypted new, short, form could damage not only the language and its evolution but our inclination in using more and more words to express a feeling.
Before being a written matrix, the language is a lively animal that needs to be fed and taken care of in order to grow up. Feed it less, and it will vanish. It is a system of sounds, words, and patterns to communicate thoughts, feelings and our deepest tribulations. Orwell's Newspeak intended to remove all shades of meaning from language, leaving simple dichotomies (pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, goodthink and crimethink) which reinforced the total dominance of the State. 'A staccato rhythm of short syllables was also a goal, further reducing the need for deep thinking about language'. If you don't express your pain (in words, or physically with a face twitch), the psychological pain will be less.
Damn, doesnt sound a bit too familiar? Lets see: SMS, MMS, asl, pls gr8, brb, 4get, how r u, u2, luv u, luv u 2, 4c, bbiab, bbl, roflmao, afk, lol, fubar, c u l8r, abt, are only a few of the new Orwellian language we are happily embracing. Is languages decadence curable? Cuz r not doin a thing 2 cure it. Perhaps we are doomed to become victims of the Newspeak and we will end up using indeed 10% of our brain, according to the myth.
Now, you have to be aware of who/which telecommunication company paid for the research that came up with the results that texting?SMSing isnt damaging. Maybe it is just the skeptic in me.
If texting is making us bad spellers then spell-check must be making us good spellers, right?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to see a study that also takes into account instant messaging along with text messaging.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTxting was only popularized within the past few years while IMs were widely used since about a decade ago. In fact, a lot of the spelling variations originated from IM speak. The nature of IM usage is more conversational and people can easily translate such shorthand spelling and poor grammar usage to hand-written material.
Growing up on these habits *must* have some kind of effect on the written word, unless that individual is a stickler for standard English...
I also disagree with [scientific study]! I have my own counter evidence too, [personal anecdotes] and [feelings of moral superiority]!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have always been a bad speller (spell-check is a lifesaver). the absence of IMing and texting would not have changed that, especially sense I only really started a few years ago. I would study and hour a day on my spelling words in elementary school and still barely pass.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd like to point out that the article mentions good Queen's English. I think a study on the average American would show, that they in fact do not know how to spell and their grammar is severely lacking. But I don't think this is the fault of SMS on it's own. It's part of a trend of the 'illiteracy' in North America. Biggest culprit being : Microsoft Word's Spell Check and the resulting aftermath of web sites and other programs programming similar functions into their products. Why learn when you can hit the button to fix it or spot the squiggly line right?...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd well...there's always the fully literate people who just feel like being lazy. I think we've all been guilty of this at some point.
Spell checkers are just as bad for spelling as calculators are for math.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMany rely too much on them rather than actually use their brains. One used to learn to spell as one learned simple math.
No need anymore as we can just click spell check or whip out the ol' calculator.
I text message using a phone that picks the letters for you based on your typing each key once to spell the word. That is, I just have to press the keys 6, 4, 7, 7, 7, 3, 5, 5 to type "misspell" rather than 6 once for "m", 4 three times for "i", etc. If you do not spell the word correctly, it can't pick the correct letter. It forces you to spell correctly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow many young people have you seen texting that would give you that impression? Because surely you cannot say that all people aging from 17-25 can't spell correctly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat experience have you had to make that kind of conclusion about young people? Okay, so some cannot spell or read very well, but you can't categorize all of the people who can't do those things poorly in the age group of 17-25. Some adults in their 30's,40's,50's etc are not able to read or spell well either.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisexecuse me~what does "tmlae" mean?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf roughly 7 billion people sent 2.3 trillion messages in 2008, that means that every single person on the planet sent more than 330 messages every day. I find this hard to swallow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI meant to say "year", not "day", but I still don't buy it. Maybe I'm just weird, beacause I can live without it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's not just young people. I think this article forgets that 73% of the the population has spelling/grammar issues. Regardless of age. It just happens to be that young people get lazy, not that they can't read/write. Why type laugh out loud when you can type 'lol'. It's faster, and in our world we are aiming at fast. And also, we have to keep in mind that if you're reading this kind of article to begin with, you are more than likely part of the exception. Try not to take it too personal, huh? (I'm at 25 end of that age group, so long as you research a bit, you'll never get up in arms about it) ... lol
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have to note that you haven't actually made any connection between texting and inability to spell...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Spell checkers are just as bad for spelling as calculators are for math. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNeither of those assertions has ever been proved. In fact there are studies that show calculator usage actually frees up time and mental cycles to do higher math, when the "rote" can be handled by a near ubiquitous machine.
Do not blame spell checkers either - at least people can easily and quickly see the proper spelling, without having to walk over to a dictionary, guess at the correct spelling and then look it up
Why not just blame teachers or parents - like most everyone else? ;) ROTFLMAO
Once upon a time, some people said that contractions were the beginning of the end of the English language.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you really want to improve language skills, try going one entire day - without using a contraction or a pronoun.
I bet you can't do it..(contraction intended).
If you use T9Word when you text, when you start typing in a word it brings it up for you so its like having spell check. If you start typing it in and spell it wrong the word won't come up so you know the spelling isn't right. I think that this has made me a better speller. I don't think that abbreviating words is going to make you a bad speller. If there wasn't texting, i'm sure people would still be horrible spellers anyways.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistexting is not making us bad spellers just because we abbreviate on our text messages that dont mean that we cant make a mistake when we write
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor ages, linguists have lamented the chaotic spelling of English. So called "bad spelling" offers away out of the morass. Simply stop teaching "spelling" for a generation or so. Very quickly, people will settle on a convention that makes sense (peepl wil setl on a konvenshun that maiks sens). It will be painful for the pedants, but beneficial in the long run. Of course, in the short term, some will use "good spelling" as a social filter, but they will die out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTax laws and (English) spelling suck up a huge amount of brain-power for naught. Who won the national spelling contests in any non-English speaking countries? They don't have any, you say! Maybe texting will rationalize English spelling in a way that George Bernard Shaw could never have dreamed of!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a waste of time!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTax laws and (English) spelling suck up a huge amount of brain-power for naught. Who won the national spelling contests in any non-English speaking countries? They don't have any, you say! Maybe texting will rationalize English spelling in a way that George Bernard Shaw could never have dreamed of!
Great book recently published: Txting, the Gr8 D8
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