It's OK to keep AIMing

fooby12 writes "According to the Univeristy of Toronto instant messaging does not hurt the grammar of the people who use it. From the article: "With 80% of Canadian teenagers using instant messaging and adopting its unique linguistic shorthand, many teachers and parents are concerned about the medium's potential to corrupt kids' grammar. But instant messaging doesn't deserve its bad reputation as a spoiler of syntax, suggests a new study from the University of Toronto.""

Comments

Hand Writing has suffered

[neonprimetime]

My mom always complained, and I've finally matured enough to see why. I used to have decent hand writing. But now that I've gone thru comps sci in college and site 8 hours a day at work on a pc, my hand writing sucks. I find myself printing always, no cursive. I find myself abbreviating and using those stupid instant messaging shorthand. It's terrible. The most annoying part is I can type 100+ wpm, and can't write anywhere near that, so I am thinking about the next sentence before I've even handwritten the first ... and thus a lot of times I loose my thoughts. Good news for me though is that I don't think the art of good hand-writing is coming back anytime soon, so I think I'll be ok.

western union telegrams

[Anonymous Coward]

i was going through old western union telegrams here at work from the 50's and 60's, and they're rife with shorthand, slang, and bad grammar.
Not much has changed in 50 years, regardless of the medium

Re:Word Processor Autocorrect

[CheshireCatCO]

While I don't dispute your experience, I have to say that word processors (or IM clients) that flag suspect words has actually improved my spelling. I see the mispelled words so often that I start making a mental note of the ones I screw up the most, one at a time. I'm a lousy speller, but I actually find that that is helping.

Re:Word Processor Autocorrect

[Gadgetfreak]

Most of the time, autocorrect helps me with my lack of typing ability rather than actually correcting a word that I did not know how to spell. But I still prefer the red underline, so you have to fix it yourself.

To me, AIM called instant attention to spelling lazyness, not grammar issues. I thought it was an AIM-borne disease where one by one my friends all started to use 'your' in place of "you're." I think it's an easy place to pick up bad speaking habits, but that's certainly nothing new... people pick up local 'common' dialects from their region. You don't see many people putting words like "y'all" or "wassup" in formal presentations and letters. You just have to make sure that the local lingo, internet or otherwise, isn't the only language they learn.

In truth, it seems like a non-issue to me.

[mmell]

Our use of grammer, syntax, even sentence construction has changed radically over the last two centuries - so much so that it is unlikely at best that a contemporary US citizen would even be able to have a conversation with one of our founding fathers (assume that there are no temporal issues to interfere).

One of the points a teacher once impressed on me is that the English language is a "living" language - new words and new usage are central to that definition as "living". The English language is a language of usage. If enough people use the language in a certain way, then that way of speaking or writing becomes acceptable. For example, I can google on a subject if I need more information. Erm, how do I AltaVista something? Oh, wait; AltaVista isn't defined as a verb nowadays, but Google is, or at least google is (Google is a proper name, of course).

Now, Latin and Hebrew are good examples of dead languages. One Rabbi I studied under told me that the closest you could come in Hebrew to saying "Jumbo Jet" might literally be translated as "big silver bird that flies fast". Those are dead languages; any unacceptable use of grammar or syntax is incorrect.

English, however, adapts and grows to accomodate the concepts and lifestyle of its users - hence, googling, IM'ing, and a whole host of other newfound verbs and nouns which weren't in the lexicon a decade ago. If online chat clients encourage people to find briefer ways to express themselves, perhaps this is simply English evolving into a more compact, precise form.

Re:In truth, it seems like a non-issue to me.

[AvitarX]

Do you mean "Shakespeare or even Chaucer" ?

Because Shakespeare is not too hard to read, you have to think it through sometimes, but it is very understandable; Chaucer is like reading another language.

As a demonstration, the first 4 lines of "The Canterbury Tales":

              Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
              The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
              And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
              Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Now the first 4 lines of speaking in Shakespear's "Titus Andronicus"

              SATURNINUS
              Noble patricians, patrons of my right,
              Defend the justice of my cause with arms,
              And, countrymen, my loving followers,
              Plead my successive title with your swords:

I do admit I am taking it on faith that only spelling has been altered in this second entry and there could be more changes being made.

Here is 4 lines of a sonnet (chosen by ease of locating) that only are eased in reading by the fact that it is typed up

                VVHen fortie Winters shall beseige thy brow,
                And digge deep trenches in thy beauties field,
                Thy youthes proud liuery so gaz'd on now,
                Wil be a totter'd weed of smal worth held:

I think you will agree Shakespeare is not particularly hard to read.

Also, as bad as our schools are I am sure there will be enough forced reading to keep people undstanding language that is only 100-200 years old. I am also willing to bet the average person has been a shitty writer for a lot longer than the last 2 decades.

Re:In truth, it seems like a non-issue to me.

[dsanfte]

Latin may not be widely spoken, nor the first language of anyone as far as I am aware, but I assure you it is quite widely used in print, and is not nearly as "dead" as you think. With each passing decade and with new, modern language teaching methods, more and more students are picking up Latin, myself among them.

A lot of the problems with teaching Latin come from the fact that many modern IE languages have lost their inflection (in the case of English, almost entirely) and rely on prepositions and word order to do what word endings did before. It is arguably easier to teach Latin to a Serbian (which still has an extensive case system) than an Italian for this reason.

In any event, besides the Vatican, there exist many resources for and modern uses of Latin online. The Nova Roma association is one, while Finland's government is also publishing official announcements in Latin. There is also an online daily newscast in Latin out of Finland.

I apologize if this post is not completely together, but it is 3am and while I am awake, I am insomniac, and my thought processes are not quite up to par.

Re:I instant message and use IRC all the time.

[Anonymous Coward]

>And obviously my grammar has suffered horribly. I doubt any of you can understand me right now, in fact.

Maybe this is just *me*, but my pet peeve is using the title of a post as the first sentence. It's bugged me since pre-internet, FidoNet days.

Dunno ... maybe it's just me, but skimming through posts I usually skip individual titles until I find one such as the parent that makes no sense until I go back and look at the title.

AC