| Is Web-Slanguage New-Age English? |
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| Contributed by Uma Shankari | |
 New-Age English Her teacher was horrified: has the web-slanguage of the student spilled over from the chat room to the class room? Maya says that she was in a hurry to finish the test on time and hadn’t noticed what she had written. That had been the teacher’s fear too: have the youngsters become so used to writing u instead of you, so used to ignoring the capitalizations, so used to omitting the punctuations and vowels and articles in the chat room that they find nothing odd in their writing? Can chatting on the internet or messaging frequently over the mobile phones impair your language skills? Shakuntala, a teacher in Daffodils English school in Sanjay Nagar feels there might be occasional instances, but the students get the message when she deducts marks for such lapses. Manjunatha, a lecturer in Adarsha Vidya Sangh College feels that communication and language skills have actually improved with the advent of the internet. “Basically the students chat more, be it through the net or email or mobile. So they write more, express more and somewhere the communication skills improve and fear of English itself goes away. Everybody can be a writer and writing doesn’t look formidable anymore,” he says. Many schools encourage their students to build their own web pages and write the content. The teachers affirmed that this generated plenty of response from students. Indeed, as Manjunatha said, writing and, better still, publishing it is no more formidable. You can blog, phlog, vlog and podcast, all for free, and get ready, appreciative readers too. You can write and publish your own books (e-books) at a fraction of the cost of a printed book. Wikipedia, the web encyclopedia is an example of collaborative writing by volunteers from all around the world and its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the internet, simply by clicking the edit this page link. Texting has also spurred a lot of creativity amongst its users. One of the problems with online communication is how to tell whether the writer is serious, kidding, having fun, or getting angry. Emoticons are meant to offset the lack. So you want to say that you were only kidding, you could type :-), or if you are sad or upset you can show it through :-( The two emoticons have noseless variants too, :) and :( , as well as versions depicting somebody wearing glasses, B-) and B-( . New emoticons spring up every day with this ASCII art producing such innovative expressions as (( )):** for hugs and kisses and (::()::), a sign for bandaid, offering help. Technology has always fascinated youngsters. Most teens are like duck taking to water when it comes to instant and mobile text messaging, where acronyms and slang are used freely. Instant Messaging English or IMISH has three characteristics - the omission of vowels to shorten words, the use of acronyms and the use of homophones such as U in the place of "you". This new, rapid-fire communication over cellular networks has produced its own additions to the staid Concise Oxford Dictionary. BBLR (be back later), GR8 (great), HAND (have a nice day), CUL8R (see you later) and RUOK (are you OK) or the familiar FYI (for your information) and the abbreviation TX for thanks have all been admitted to its hallowed pages. You might ROFL (Rolling-On-Floor-Laughing) or simply LOL (Laughing Out Loud) if you know these two words are legitimate, having found their way into the New Oxford Dictionary of English. Is the sms-lingo confusing to you, or are you worried your children are taking advantage of your ignorance? parNts whuz kds spk d sms lingo cn go 2 http://www.transl8it.com/cgi-win/index.pl site. Write the confounding message and with the click of a button, you could get plain-vanilla English version. You can also access acronym dictionaries at http://www.noslang.com and www.Teenchatdecoder.com. On the http://www.teenangels.org/ site, you can click on the 'Activate Chat Translator' button. This site is run by responsible teenagers and you can introduce your teenager to this site (if they didn't know already); in fact if you wanted to warn them of cyber-threats, you are bound to think "thank Goodness, I didn't know how to tell them this!" Uma Shankari is a Bangalore-based freelance journalist. She is passionate about writing. She writes regularly on development issues, health and fitness, yoga/meditation, life and relationships. Read some her articles on http://www.helium.com/search/search?search_query=Uma+Shankari Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Uma_Shankari |
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