Published: February 06, 2008 09:24 am            

Can U tolerate Net shorthand?

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Much like you, my ire is raised sometimes by things I read in this newspaper. Okay, maybe “ire raised” is a strong way of putting it. Curiosity piqued, perhaps? Argumentative nature prodded? Something like that.

Such was the case when I skimmed the pages of last Saturday’s issue of “breeZe,” our people-friendly weekend product. There’s usually an opinion piece of some sort lurking on page 2, and this week was no different.

The headline read: “A Lost Art? Y R we writing this? IDK cuz we r worried?” For those of you who have never used texting or instant messaging, that last bit can be translated as, “Why are we writing this? I don’t know, because we are worried?”

Yeah. English language usage that needs translation. Believe me, I’ve been there a few times — especially during the proofreading process. I’m sure I’ve even inflicted that problem on a few people myself.

The editorial went on to decry the spread of so-called “Internet shorthand” (and although it started in the wild and woolly www.wilderness of cyberspace, it’s as common now when text messaging on our cell phones as anywhere else). It discussed how a recent letter to the editor (not this newspaper, but another CNHI member publication from whence the column came) was filled with little treats like “B4” where “before” was meant, and “r u” instead of “are you.”

“We are worried that the written word as we know it may not survive, and that’s no LOL matter,” read the editorial (“LOL” meaning “laughing out loud” and serving as a 21st century synonym for “funny”).

“We aren’t asking that everyone become a Shakespeare or Tolstoy,” it continued. “We only hope that our teachers are not accepting of text-speak from their students. We want the generations to come to have the love of words that have inspired so many in the past.”

Forsooth, the fact that the writer mentioned Shakespeare is a little ironic. But I’ll get to that later.

Yes, I love words. They’re my favorite thing in the world. I love speaking them, writing them, twisting them and playing with them like a set of Lego blocks. I love digesting them, absorbing them, and creating them. I admire poets ranging from e.e. cummings to Eminem for the novel things they do with words, rhyming them and rolling in them and ripping them apart — just to see what makes them tick.

And yes, I’m turned off by the shorthand. I refuse to use what I call “Sinead O’Connor language” when texting, opting to say “you are” rather than “U R” (O’Connor helped start this mess with her 1990 hit song, “Nothing Compares 2 U,” rendering her verbiage uglier than her haircut). I long ago gave up “LOL” for “Heh” (same amount of letters, same meaning, actual word), and my instant messenger conversations can sometimes reach “Harry Potter” lengths.

But let’s face it: The beauty of the English language — our language — is that it’s organic. It’s always evolving, changing, adapting and absorbing. It is one of the least static of the world’s greatest tongues.

And doesn’t it make sense then that perhaps Internet shorthand is not abusing the language — it’s simply taking it into its next state of being?

After all, this is the computer age. This is a period of human history where communication transpires in ways it never has before. The human race is remarkably different, in virtually cataclysmic ways, than it was even 50 years ago. It is closer to the world of “Star Trek” than most of the people who first watched the show in 1966 even realize.

Shouldn’t the way we speak change too — just as its changed with every other leap English-speaking culture has made down throughout the years? It only makes sense.

English has always been the unruly feral child of western languages. I’ve been told how difficult it is for those familiar with the romance languages to master — in French, Spanish, or Italian, for instance, rules are rules. One set of consonants will always sound the same way.

In English? We’re homophone crazy. We have so many words that look different but sound the same, or look similar but sound dissimilar that Jacques from Toulouse might throw his beret to le ground in disgust trying to figure it out. Things that seem natural to us as native born English speakers often seem illogical to those used to more keenly-structured languages.

We’ve got kind of a mutt language. Technically speaking, it’s a Germanic language, a group that includes German (duh), Dutch, Swedish and even Yiddish (oy vey!). But we’ve also absorbed a substantial amount of French vocabulary — thank you, Norman Conquest (that’s a historical war, not a professional wrestler) — and other languages.

Take it from Wikipedia: “Unlike other languages, there is no Academy to define officially accepted words. Neologisms (new words for concepts) are coined regularly in medicine, science and technology and other fields, and new slang is constantly developed. Some of these new words enter wide usage; others remain restricted to small circles.”

In other words: New words pop up all the time. And we as English speakers are much more willing to incorporate them and adapt to them than most around the world. In 1989, “The Simpsons” debuted, and pudgy patriarch Homer Simpson uttered his first frustrated, “D’oh!” Nearly two decades later, Homer Simpson is as well-known to most Americans as any other character in western literature — and “D’oh” is included in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Does it worry you that a pop culture icon is contributing words to the official lexicon? How would you feel if it was a character like Hamlet? William Shakespeare was the Hollywood machine of his day, and his works were not so much studied in stuffy classrooms like they are today, but rather enjoyed by the masses. Laugh along with “The Simpsons” today, and you’re doing the same thing the Globe Theater crowd did with “As You Like it” in the 17th century.

In fact, Billy the Bard coined more than 1,700 words that are regarded as commonplace today in his works, interchanging the purposes of nouns, verbs and adjectives and transforming them into each other for the sake of sheer wordplay. Sometimes he would even reach up and yank originals from the ether.

Here’s just a sampling of the words we use today thanks to Shakespeare: amazement, blushing, bump, compromise, critic, champion, dawn, drugged, elbow, fashionable, flawed, generous, gloomy, gossip, hint, hobnob, invulnerable, jaded, laughable, lonely, majestic, marketable, obscene, outbreak, puking, rant, secure, submerge, torture, undress, unreal, worthless and zany.

Sure, “The Simpsons” gave us “d’oh” ... but “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” gave us “bedroom.” The next time you step into a Bed Bath & Beyond and see the sign telling you which section to go to for a nice down comforter, think about the fact that you have a work of pop culture — Elizabethan-era pop culture, at least — to thank for that.

Should we make sure our kids know “to be or not to be” doesn’t have to be written as “2 B or not 2 B?” Sure. But it wouldn’t kill us to be a little less resistant to this newfangled way of communicating either. We are communicating faster and on smaller surfaces than ever before. Conversations that might have taken months to hold in the era of quill and ink now take place in under 60 seconds. We are an on-the-go society, and we would be holding the English language back — stunting the sort of liquidity it’s always embraced — if we were to demonize these new ways of using words and ideas.

Words and I are BFF — best friends forever. But like all relationships, this one has changed over time — there was a time when I was a kid when it wouldn’t have been absurd to use the word “rad” in a non-ironic sentence, and absolutely nobody, young or old, would have known what I was talking about if I said the weekend’s soiree was “crunk.”

Our society moves along with its words. It transforms and molds itself around the way people communicate. As we partake of more art, more media, more day-to-day contact with our fellow humanity than ever before, words are everywhere, being traded hand-to-hand, mouth-to-ear, and each individual is likely to put their own unique spin on these tools we utilize to share our ideas, our lives and ourselves.

It’s gonna take a little effort on my part to get used to the assimilation of Internet shorthand. But I can’t stop it, so I’d better learn to love it — or at least tolerate it. And that goes for all of us — writers, English teachers, and the everyman (another word that originated from a 16th century play) alike.

I don’t think that’s 2 much 2 ask — do U?

        

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