Text Messaging Threatens Literacy

from the is-this-guy-serious? dept

Someone with a degree has way too much free time on their hands. An academic who apparently likes to make noise is saying that text messaging is destroying literacy. Does he really believe that because we use abbreviations in typing out quick messages we're doomed to an illiterate society? The fact is that language evolves (with the possible exception of French), and I doubt that we're going to lose our ability to speak and write well because of some folks using mobile phones.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    An Academic, 23 Jan 2001 @ 7:49am

    Hmmm

    Te point that he does not make is that all that is happening is that people are dropping the vowels from the words. So we all end up writing Hebrew. My god, it must be the end times! Prepare to meet thy doom!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Phillip, 23 Jan 2001 @ 8:31am

    Ze master plan

    Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC (now officially the European Union, or EU), the European Parliament has commissioned a feasability study in ways of improving efficiency in communications between Government departments.

    European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessarily difficult; for example: cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would be administered by a committee staffed at top level by participating nations.

    In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's' instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k' sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.

    There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it was anounsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'. This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty persent shorter in print.

    In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.

    We would al agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'.

    Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o' kould be dropd from words kontaining 'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

    Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of the Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.

    *shamlessly ripped from web*

    Phillip.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Duffman, 23 Jan 2001 @ 2:36pm

    Grammar

    I do agree with the article to a point - I think that grammar and spelling today is pretty bad - I knew I was one of the better people at english stuff (pun intended) throughout school. And it's only getting worse - I've even seen ads with grammar errors in them. I don't think computers will improve reading and writing skills, but I'm sure people even 20 or 30 years ago would look at the English language today and tsk tsk us. Is this happening in other languages too? I know French is protected quite severly against the intrusion of English slang, though it still happens.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike (profile), 23 Jan 2001 @ 3:45pm

      Re: Grammar

      Well, maybe the guy has a point. I'm suddenly reminded of the following article. It seems that school officials in Washington DC put ads on some buses encouraging kids to stay in school. The ad had both a spelling and a grammatical error.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.