The demise of the English language

Is it so wrong to care that, at some point, foreigners will be speaking better English than its native speakers?

Trade Me users under fire for abusing English language
22 November 2006
By YVONNE MARTIN

Online traders are the latest to be blamed for sabotaging the English language. Young texters were the first to be pilloried for reducing the written word to a wild jumble of short forms and phrases.

Now communication experts are criticising the loose lingo used by people who trade and chat on online message boards.

Professor Philip Williams, head of Massey University's School of Language Studies, said while texters abbreviated words to fit on a mobile phone screen, there was no such excuse for bad spelling and grammar on message boards.

"It is somewhat annoying. There are a lot of people who don't even seem to bother with using their spelling check, which these days most people have. Without a certain degree of standardisation, everything becomes rather idiosyncratic. And it ends up taking up more of our time, puzzling out things than if better spellings were used."

Victoria University associate professor of communication studies Lalita Rajasingham also finds the linguistic creep irritating.

"It just shows a lack of educational attainment. I'm sorry, but that's what it is. I would hit it back straight to the education system," she said. "It's laziness or a lack of knowledge. Anything goes now. It thoroughly annoys me."

It is not just online community boards, such as Trade Me, where standards are slipping, Rajasingham believes. She has also noticed lackadaisical language used in academic blogs on the net.

"They are appalling sometimes. It depends on the subject area and the people who are posting it. Take Wikipedia (the free online encyclopedia). I have found so many spelling mistakes in that. If Wikipedia has words misspelt and phonetically spelt, who are we to criticise Trade Me?"

A quick search of Trade Me listings reveals a nation of bad spellers. The word "separate" is misspelt as "seperate" more times (1046) than it is spelt correctly (1034).

It is a similar story with "receive" (1046), spelt erroneously as "recieve" (1039) nearly 50 per cent of the time. A scan of Trade Me's community message board finds dubious new words like "sumthing", "unfortunitly", "consatly", "a grives" and "signifigence".

Spurred into action by his findings of spelling misdemeanours on Trade Me, television personality Jon Bridges set up an online identity as "spellnazi", a one-man crusade to lift standards.

In auction after auction, he posted his spelling corrections in the public comments section. Most took his corrections with good humour, Bridges said. Others told him where to put his apostrophe. "Some people said `bugger off you Nazi loser'," he said.

Bridges then went a step further, auctioning one "hardly used and sadly neglected" apostrophe on Trade Me. The apostrophe sold to Joe of Whakatane for $100, which Bridges kept for raising awareness of the importance of spelling.

Trade Me commercial manager Michael O'Donnell said there was no intention to outlaw bad spelling and grammar on the website. "I think the English language is a vibrant and growing thing. I think it is a living organism and when we start becoming language Nazis it's a sad day."

- The Press

I can understand the occasional misspelled or fingergeeked word, but I agree that there are numerous instances of flagrant carelessness. I see a lot of typos in the newspapers now that spellchecking has taken the place of a live editor. So far, I have refrained from writing the papers to point them out. I'll wait until I have little else to do. ...Call me a crank, and you'll probably be right ::)

[MotherBear]

It?s not just in Ireland, is it? :rolleyes:

Mobile texts harm written language ? Irish report
Reuters | Thursday, 26 April 2007

DUBLIN: The rising popularity of text messaging on mobile phones poses a threat to writing standards among Irish schoolchildren, an education commission says.

The frequency of errors in grammar and punctuation has become a serious concern, the State Examination Commission said in a report after reviewing last year's exam performance by 15-year-olds.

"The emergence of the mobile phone and the rise of text messaging as a popular means of communication would appear to have impacted on standards of writing as evidenced in the responses of candidates," the report said, according to the Irish Times.

"Text messaging, with its use of phonetic spelling and little or no punctuation, seems to pose a threat to traditional conventions in writing."

The report laments that, in many cases, candidates seemed "unduly reliant on short sentences, simple tenses and a limited vocabulary".

In 2003, Irish 15-year-olds were among the top 10 performers in an international league table of literacy standards compiled by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

From here .

[KiwiHopeful]

As an English teacher, these stories always make me laugh. They follow the same pattern: 1. English is dying because of ... 2. Find a university prof to blame school teachers. 3. Find some buffoon to say something stupid that seems to prove the point. 4. File story away for recycling in 6-9 months.

I always want to ask, is the purpose of language to communicate or to prove social status? I am always uneasy about the use of language as Shibboleth.

[Dawn]

Cor what a fantastic word. I've written it down so that I can put it to further use when I'm teaching my 'coded' groups of kids. I never came across this word once in my degree not did my partner and they both included English!

I agree with both sides a little though because bad spelling and grammar really, really gets my goat especially when it's on public signs and so on. What I really don't like is when you commission a professional to do some work for you and when they send you the proof it's full of spelling mistakes - that's just wrong. For eg when we put our house on the market, the estate agents version of the house details was so badly spelled and so grammatically incorrect, I couldn't just edit it, I had to literally re-write it. When I complained she tried to say it was the typists fault but typists don't change layout. Fuming I was! And just yesterday I paid a young designer to send her finished poster design she had done for me to the printer (she was going on a cruise and didn't have time to allow me to proof it), picked 100 posters and 500 flyers up from the printers and a glaring, whopping spelling mistake right in the middle of the top line! Ritious instead of riotous! Fuming again, especially as she's taken off now and I have no way of getting hold of her.

But, I also think that new language use is exciting. Languages do evolve and the innovative ways young people use language is fresh and interesting. There's room for it I think. What is proper English anyway? I think we should all go back to lobbing some good old Shakespearian insults about, that would make life very colourful! You slack jawed, festering pussboil!

[MotherBear]

It’s even in the Cambridge Dictionary .

I did write a few words in reply last night (quite a few, actually :rolleyes: ) and forgot about the 15 min. rule where the forum bumps you off if you’re taking too long over your post. Lost the lot!

I was saying how concerned I am about foreigners struggling to learn our language when the goalposts keep moving. And how do they manage when trying to read something written by a native English speaker that’s full of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes? This is an important aspect now that we communicate so frequently with people from other countries, especially in business matters. You just have to look on the Internet at the way people write on there now. Many don’t use punctuation marks, capital letters and I won’t even mention the spelling. My point is that writing in this haphazard way can end up with misleading information being passed on, occasionally with serious consequences, because the whole meaning of a sentence or paragraph can totally change, purely due to such errors and omissions. I’ve seen paragraphs written from beginning to end without one single punctuation mark or capital letter, so it reads as one very long sentence. The reader is free to choose where one sentence ends and another one starts and what meaning can be attached to that misspelt word, but will the meaning still be the same as was originally intended by the author?

These days, if you discuss or criticise anyone’s spelling or grammar, you’re told to ‘Get a life’. I find myself, on many occasions, struggling to understand what message someone is trying to convey and it takes up a fair bit of time. I would agree that it’s fun using text speke for the purpose it’s intended and it’s sensible to do so considering the circumstances. And the latest buzz words do add a bit of a zing to conversations with young people. My problem is when these folks can no longer make the transition back to proper written and spoken English when necessary and, in the future, when they are out and about in the world, they may not always be able to make themselves understood clearly. To me, it’s not a case of people’s command of the language showing which class they come from, but merely the concern that youngsters coming up behind us will no longer be able to string a comprehensible sentence together. Perhaps their peers will understand them, but the rest of us will be left out of it, unless we, too, are given the gift of being able to decipher what it is that’s been written and translate it correctly, adding basic punctuation in the right places, as we go.

The evolution of language has been going on gradually over centuries, but what we’re seeing today isn’t evolution, it’s corruption. It follows no rules that can be taught and passed on because it’s made up of a jumble of misspelt and misused words created by individual people, in their own individual way, who really have no idea which is the correct way to spell them. I don’t know whether future society will be able to just accept that there will be umpteen different ways to spell the same word and that punctuation is a thing of the past and is no longer necessary. We all make spelling and grammatical errors at times and that’s fine, but it’s when people don’t care any more that makes me sad and very concerned. It’s a bit shaming when foreigners can speak and write our own language better than we can. I wonder what they must think of us.

Is it just my age?

[selchie]

I think new words are great, but wish people would take time to spell correctly. Sure, I am known to confuse a vowel or two, but hate seeing horrible misspellings. To me, it says that someone is either poorly educated or lazy. I can be gracious with the former, happy that they make an effort to write, but don't have much patience with laziness. This is supposed to be a great era of communication, but if the message is garbled, then one really isn't communicating.

As for the folks who say "get a life" when someone notes their horrible spelling and grammar, I'd be inclined to tell them to get an education. Or to give a damn. But then, I'm a cranky geezer.

[MotherBear]

I'm sure I put on another post about this topic a while ago but it escapes me at the moment.

Usng txt at exms tday may nt fail u, say orgnsrs
5:00AM Wednesday November 14, 2007
By Martha McKenzie-minifie

The NCEA and scholarship exam season starts on Monday, involving almost 140,000 secondary school students at more than 400 exam centres.

New Zealand Qualifications Authority's deputy chief executive Bali Haque yesterday asked students to use traditional English, not text language.

But he said answers using words with missing vowels - in the style made popular through text messaging - would not necessarily fail.

"The litmus test will be ... have they understood the concept of the idea?" said Mr Haque.

"That's what it has always been and that's what it will, no doubt always continue to be."

He said students were expected to use "good, solid, traditional English".

More here

What folks have to say about it

[KiwiHopeful]

As an English teacher, these stories always make me laugh. They follow the same pattern: 1. English is dying because of ... 2. Find a university prof to blame school teachers. 3. Find some buffoon to say something stupid that seems to prove the point. 4. File story away for recycling in 6-9 months.

Hahahah!

April-May-June-July-August-November

1-2-3-4-5-6!

What do I win?

[Dawn]

A slap t' back a forehead youth!!!

Is it really that long since we wrote those posts?

BLOODY HELL!!!!