I've recently finished an excellent book on the evolution of the English language. Towards the end the author discusses recent trends and changes and in particular the arrival of Text English. This is the language used to send a text message from one mobile phone to another. The message below is part of a piece that appeared in The Guardian in early 2003 under 'English as a Foreign languge':

"Dnt u sumX rekn eng lang v lngwindd? 2 many wds & ltrs? ?nt we b usng lss time & papr? ? we b 4wd tnking & txt? 13 yr grl frim w scot 2ndry schl sd ok. Sh rote GCSE eng as (abt hr smmr hols in NY) in txt spk. (NO)! Sh sd sh 4t txt spk was 'easr thn standard eng..."

Could we all be writing like this someday? It's more comprehensible to us than modern English would be to Chaucer, but personally I hope not; not because I don't think the language should evolve, but because this just reeks of laziness rather than innovation. But then I doubt I'd have much say in the matter.

Harry

Actually, Harry, a lot of people were writing kind of like that thanks to enlightened teaching techniques of the 1970s and 80s, around the time the possessive apostrophe became as arcane as the theory of relativity. Seriously though, texting ain't anything to do with language evolution, more a reflection of the conditions governing a particular communications environment (in much the same way that headline writers appear to have a language that is uniquely their own on account of newsprint design and space limitations). So I guess (hope) we've nothing to worry about. . . Yet.

Richard

Very reassuring to know!

Cheers

Harry

My god – I hope you’re right, Richard, but I would lay bets some of it will seep into the language in the way Americanisms do… tonite… thru… SEE!!! I knew it! My spellchecker just accepted ‘thru’… blast and damn!

Dee
Wish there was a smiley for gnashing teeth!

I have no problems with the english language evolving. The problem is, it's not evolving, quite the opposite, it's devoloving into a semi-intelligible, highly mis-interpretable spasticated load of nonsense.

"o bt u lv t 2 IB"

Anybody tries to speak like that to me, I'll not so kindly tell them to **** off. It's human lethargy and lack of genuine real life emotion and motivation that is leading to the continual decline of standards in all areas of society. I could easily turn the emergence of txt talk into the driving force behind coral decline, third world civil unrest and general political indecency, but I'm sure you can all make the same connections yourselves.

I can't agree that sample of "text speak" was easier to read than Chaucer, as I still don't understand what it said!

Ani

<Added>

Oh, Harry, by the way, what was the name of the book that you've just finished on the evolution of the English language?

I just finished reading Mark Abley's book Spoken Here , which was very interesting, but not quite broad enough to encompass texting! :-)

What? What? Is it just me - can't understand it. I do use text on my phone but do everything in proper words because I don't know how to txt (OK knew that one) properly.
Sue

Never mind text messaging - what about bloody mobile 'phones themselves. Marginally useful if you've run out of petrol in the middle of nowhere I suppose, but why on Earth would you want to take postage stamp sized photographs with a bloody 'phone for for God's sake?!! (I've actually written a few poems on these techno-comforters which I might upload one day)

MIKE

I will only, I repeat ONLY have a mobile phone that - call me old fashioned - you can make phone calls on!!! It's not funny, it's not clever it's just a phone (that I use in case the school need to phone me and tell me that my daughter cut her chin open on the bottom of the swimming pool - that sort of thing, you know!). However...I do have friends (yes, really) who every year "upgrade" to the latest phone and we have to sit and watch them gloat and show off and try to figure out how to use them! This year they have big, huge fuckoff phones that look totally ludicrous because they are HUGE and the dial pad, or whatever it's called is a big round thing with the numbers in a circular thing so you don't know where they are. BUT they can take photos and 30 second movies and they can record their vile daughter saying "daddy, your phone's ringing" instead of a normal ring tone. So they are bigger and cleverer than us! OK?

And now they all glow too...

My wife has a picture phone, but only because her sister lives on the other side of the county, and doesn't have access to the internet, it's the easiest way to send pictures of the kids to her.

But some people are a little obsessed with having the latest gadget, and whilst I can eventually decipher it, it looks so darn ugly.

And seeing people's faces lit by their mobile phones, I just don't like it...

As someone born under the sign of Aquarius, I hanker for the past and yet grab any new technology going. I used to have a big black bakelite phone that made your arm ache just holding the receiver to your ear. It sounded exquisite when it rang but the sound quality was crap so I also had to have a modern phone plugged in to actually take calls.

I got my first mobile phone ten years ago. It was like a brick so I kept updating until about four years ago when I got a T28. It’s now almost a classic in mobile phone terms. It slips into my pocket like a credit card and I wouldn’t be without it. BUT it doesn’t do tricks – right. It’s a phone. And I’ve never sent a text message in my life (more Aquarian contrariness).

A touch of synchronicity – I’m listening to ‘Worldes Blysse’ by Medieval Babes. Chaucer would have understood them…

Dee

It's interesting how we all slam some aspects of 'progress' and its consequences [ mobile phones, texting, predictive spelling, the demise of the apostrophe, the dumbing down of television and the newspapers ] and yet each one of us is using on a daily basis the very technology that has brought about those changes.

I guess there comes a point with each incremental change that we have to decide if - in our opinion - that change is 'good or 'bad'- whatever that means!

What fascinates me about technology is its rapid progression – sometimes in unexpected ways. When the original computers were developed (big whirly wheely things tended by men in white coats and clipboards) it was envisioned that they would soon be so powerful that there would only need to be five of them in the whole world.

(it’s a bit like the prediction that, by the nineteen-fifties, New York would be twentyfive feet deep in horse shit)

I remember the first calculator I saw. It was in the early seventies. It was the size of half a pound of butter, had a mains transformer to recharge its battery and it didn’t have a hundredth of the capacity of something you can by as a 99p key ring.
The cost of it? £58.00

Gee, I’m reminiscing tonight… onto Katie Melua now. smmmoooooth.

Hi Anisoara,

The book is 'The Adventure of English' by Melvyn Bragg. It covers the language from 500AD to the present and is well worth a read.

Cheers

Harry

I have no problem with technology, it's the fact that people usually fail to use it properly that angers me.