"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."

Comments

packet wars

[papasui]

Heh I'm waiting for the post when the same kids get in an arguement and say. kid 1> y0 eye g0nn4 smUrF you! kid 2> j00r smUrF c4n't h4ndle my f1rewall! etc.

new ebonics?

[Sebastopol]

Pick up any gangsta rap album (of any ethnicity), and you'll probably hear something like:

"Let me aks you niggaz sump'n, a'ight?"

That's how languages evolve, deal with it.

Anyone who says "dude", "man", "gonna" or "ain't" is guilty of contributing to the change of english. No one speaks Chaucerian or Shakespearian or even Coleridge-ian anymore! And it's perfectly acceptable in the real world. For better or for worse.

Fuck, look at how badly George W mutilites the language. Ever notice when Newspapers quote him, they always type what he "meant" to say, versus what he actually said? Only liberal papers insert the [sic].

And rap is hardly to blame -- I also blame Cyndi Lauper and her vowel reversal trend that started all this!

(My apologies, as I'm not sure if the n-bomb is offensive or not in this context, i'm just a Benneton(tm) white-boy who thinks he's PC)

IN UR FACE, GRAMMER POLICE!

[Destoo]

"There is no official English language," said Jesse Sheidlower, the North American editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. "Language is spread not because not anyone dictates any one thing to happen. The decisions are made by the language and the people who use the language."

IN UR FACE, GRAMMER POLICE!