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The Madness that is SMS Language


Very few things get my goat as much as SMS language. This baffling code language consisting of random abbreviations and amputations of decent words has gone too far in my book. Confined to a personal message meant to convey an urgent something, as in "B back a.s.a.p. Pls prep dinner b4 7", it is entirely harmless and may even be practical. But let loose in the formal world of academia, it is an unstoppable plague that threatens the dignity of those who love words simply because they are multi-syllabic and melodious when pronounced.

Jokes aside, the popularity of SMS language among sensible teenagers and adults is so widespread that it is now on the verge of sucking standard language use into its black hole of no return. No retrieval possible. As a result, what you see these days is a whole generation of students (and adults) who have no clue what the apostrophe is meant for. They, foreseeably, also cannot tell the difference between "your" and "you're", "its" and "it's", and "there" and "they're" (Facebook users, are you reading this?). To compound the horror, there exists a legion of SMS fanatics who are beginning to shorten words which common sense tells us can never be shortened. You get head-scratchers like "hav" (for "have"), "tis" (for "this"), "de" (for "the"), "bin" (for "been"), "gud" (for "good"), and, my personal favourite, "fren" (does anyone even know how to spell the original word these days?). Why these words are shortened I have no clue (mental laziness probably has "sumting" to do with it). But it is the fact that somebody actually thought it was possible to shorten them that unnerves me. Allow me to be pedantic (as if I were only about to be), "tis" can NEVER be "this", because "this" actually has the (voiced) "th" sound, and "gud" can NEVER be "good" because "gud" has a short vowel whereas the vowel in "good" is an elongated one ("guud" would be more accurate).

Why is it important to distinguish between "your" and "you're"? Because, as one of the Monty Pythons would say, your mother is a hamster, but you're an enormous cow for thinking you can get away with using SMS language!
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