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"L33T" Speak Invades Schools
Masem writes "NYTimes reports on how common chat room/IM shortcuts (such as 'u' for you, 'r' for are, etc) are creeping into the classroom and homework assignments from those teenage kids that spend a significant amount of time in chat programs. This is giving the teachers headaches in trying to grade the assignments, much less understand them because of the techno-generation gap, and to try to prevent further abuse of the language, have begun penalizing students for using the net slang. Students sometimes don't even realize they use the chat room shorthand until it's pointed out to them, because that method of chatting has become second nature to them."
A friend of mine, Rayner, who works at a University in England has also received a job application from an undergraduate that contained 'L33T' speak (well, Mobile Phone abbreviations). Think about it, this person had already GOT TO UNIVERSITY!
Needless to say he told them to rewrite it (after getting a copy).
same story, different decade...
the world was going to go to hell in a handbasket when:
* kids started using calculators instead of slide rules
* kids started typing homework on PCs with spell checkers
* kids started using the 'net as their research source, rather than the library
really, now. it's an interesting sign of the times, but then again, there have always been kids who've used the vernacular in their writing, whether it be poor grammar, slang, or whatnot.
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
I thought for awhile on why someone wouldn't be able to realize they're typing this cyber-shorthand and the only thing I could think of was laziness. I mean, I personally couldn't see how on earth u could b substituting words without noticing it.
But then it hit me. It isn't laziness, but the lack of any real typing skills. Shorthand is simply a result of trying to be more efficient in transmitting your thoughts. Repetition of anything will develop into normal practice. This is evident in the ubiquitous and pervasive slang we have.
For me, I've been essentially a touch-typist since about the 9th grade and it only takes me a few hundredths of a second more to type YOU instead of U. My girlfriend however is a one-handed hunt and peck type. She also uses every short-hand substitute I've ever seen.
Perhaps it should become a requirement to teach kids to touch-type at an earlier age. This would not only facilitate more productive computer use but should also help foster proper language use by obviating the need for this type of shorthand.
sedawkgrep
Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
This may date me a wee bit, but I received my Amateur Radio License back in 1977, when I was 14. I had my novice ticket, so I was limited to CW (Morse Code) over the air. Since CW is a very slow way to communicate, there are many accepted abbreviations and codes. For example: FB OM NO QRM ON UR SIGNAL W9TACO DE WB3IZT Translation : Fine business old man, there is no natural interference on your signal. Your turn, W9TACO (the other person's Ham call), this is WB3IZT (my call).
I would never had dreamed of writing any school work using "code speak" much less expected to get credit for it. "L33T 5P33K" is the same way -- it may be fine on IM or in chatrooms, but it does not belong on school work.
BTW, I know W9TACO is not a valid call sign...if I need to explain it to you, forget it.
Beware of Sleestak
One of the the things I have always loved about the English language is its democratic elitism. Permit me to explain. Some languages, such as French, actually have a body that decides formally what consitutes the language.
English doesn't do that. English does have an elite that decides what is in the standard language, but that elite is the collection of writers, editors, and lexicographers who work with the language in the modes of cultural production. So, what Standard English is is decided by a literate elite, but membership in this literate elite is open to anyone based on merit.
But that is not all. Beneath that "high brow" crowd who write literature and scan literature for new usage, there are hundreds of thousands of idiomatic communities speaking and using untold varieties of English. These are not "Standard English," but they are living, breathing, socially functional dialects of English. From time to time, a writer of genius emerges from such a community and brings new usage, idioms, and ways of speaking into that "staid and stuffy" elite. Those portions that speak in new ways, ways that other communities of English find useful, get taken up by the English speaking world at large. Then we find these new usages showing up both in other dialect communities, and in the elite world of "Standard English."
Thus the world of Standard English is reactionary, conservative, and resistant to change, but this is as it should be. This is the force of stability that allows us to read (albeit with difficulty for some) six hundred year old Elizabethan English, like Shakespeare, and should allow English speakers six hundred years from now to read Toni Morrison or Neal Stephenson. At the same time, the vernacular throbs with creativity. Vibrant and electric new words, phrases and idioms crackle into being every day. Most are lost. Some appear only in the margins, in the throw away dialoge of television scripts, or in idiom spoken by characters in novels; mere markers in the history of the language. Some, however, merge into that conservative realm where they join such everyday poetry as "being blue," or "flight of stairs."
I've studied only a few of the world's languages, but so far English is my one true love. Latin and French have their charms for me, but English owns my mind. I treasure both the stodgy elite (which anyone may join; all one must do is add to the great literature of the English language -- no problem!), and the endless, almost frantic, creativity of everyday speakers of English.
Bearing in mind all of the foregoing, schools are not there to institutionalize the random creativity of English. That takes care of itself. They are there to be sure that we all have access to the stodgy collection of Standard English, so we may get our random creativity past the reactionary gatekeepers of the language. All good literature simultaneously reveres the language and subverts it. The most striking example, to me, is "Huckleberry Finn," the first novel with real American voices in it, as opposed to a bunch of Americans speaking more or less just like British speakers of English. Reverence and subversion.