What do you think about the 'dumbing down' of the English language? Ex: 2nite vs tonight as accepted spelling

Answer 1

i think that it is ridiculous, the rest of us were capable of learning to spell it and read it the way it was written. I think it will make our nation as a whole look ignorant and incapable of learning something as basic as our own native language.

Answer 2

People have always sought shorthand, but I don't think that the English language is that "dumbed-down." For example, no self-respecting essayist will use the word "2nite" in an essay versus "tonight". I, personally, love grammar and proper spelling etc. and I agree that there is a bit of "dumbing down". Nevertheless, I have to wonder how far down we may have come. Was everybody a perfect speller prior to the advent of AOL IM?

Still, I know what you're saying. I wish that people, dumbed-down or otherwise, would have to common decency to stop abusing the English language!

Answer 3

I think we have a choice of streamlining English or suffer a major butchery of it. 2nite isn't likely to reach a dictionary anytime soon but so many of our words are unnecessarily long. The spelling of many are just plain arbitrary. If the word came from France it's got one suffix if it was Germanic another and yet another if it was Latin based and so on.

The net effect is that so much time is devoted to Englsh spelling and grammer that there's little room for lititure, language use and exploration of English such as writing and English language history. Think about it, if spelling was easy you'd have time to learn about English variations like Australian and British. You could be writing and reading stories instead of memorizing words. That's what English has become. A long lesson in memorization and it's short lived. Soon as the word is off the tests people rely on spell checkers because it's easier and leaves room to remember the phone number of that hot gal they met last night.

It also costs us dearly in productivity. So much time running spell checkers, grammer checkers and STILL mistakes get through. Can you pick up a newspaper without a misued word slipping thorugh? Even in books small mistakes can sometimes slip by. Vocabularies are often stunted because the 5 cent words are so long and difficult to spell. People would rather use those same memory cells to put fun or usefull information in. Imigrants would have an easy time learning English except for spelling rules and higher grammer. Why not make it easier on them. Also if we objectively start abbreviating the language then it's a controlled flow and avoids the raw butchery that is certain to take place if the English language resists change. If done gradually and logically over a 10 year period it would not introduce post-illiteracy. Nor would the old spelling be unacceptable. The English language has gone through several such periods before. It's overdue for another overhaul.

Personally I feel CHOOSE le or el I don't care which but somebody PLEASE make up thier mind on that one :)

Drop the silent letters. They only make English harder to learn. They take up type space making books more expensive, are usually hard to spell. The silent letters serve no function but to identify where the word came from. That's what books on English word origions are for.

ie or ei pick one. Except for names I should always come before E. Assuming we don't just ditch the whole thing and replace it with a new letter.

Read is redundant. Read could be red. If it's capitalized it's a color. I cannot think of a sentence where read and red could not be deduced by context. One is an adjetive the other a verb. To change the spelling would actually guard against the decay of the language by ecluding phrases like I red my world meaning they painted everything they owned red. It's improper English but becoming acceptable today. There are dozens of words that could be shortened in such a way.

Take the ph prefix out and shoot it. Fonetic makes a whole lot more sense and after seeing it a few times is easier on the eyes. faux paux that is a phrase that not only needs shooting put a stake through it before it can rise again. Not the usage the spelling. It has the phoneticity of rubberized moose.

As for Ebonics, no that was to teach slang instead of proper English. Few of the Internet abrevs like 2nite owe anything to Eubonics. Though just for irony why is Eubonics not spelled phonetically? LOL. Many of the words are not abreviated at all. Axed meaning asked for example. Wassup meaning whats up.
Wassup doll meaning whats up dude or dudette depending on who it was addressed too. It can also be pluralized without changing the suffix. Tense and structure are loose in Eubonics and often full of contradictory usage. For the most part Eubonics requires more memorization than proper English. Eubonics is also culturally specific to Black Ghetto areas, which has in itself at least 3 specific dialects being East Coast, West Coast and Southern Eubonics. So which Eubonics would you teach if you taught it? The problems with the Eubonics idea are too numerous and not the scope of this question.

Answer 4

I see what you're saying. Now today an acceptable email would include: do u wanna hang 2nite? I don't get it, it takes an extra two seconds to spell everything correctly. I don't think we're stupid, I think some of us are becoming too lazy. Come on people, stop being so sluggish. I'm with you!

Answer 5

I personally don't like it, it makes things too lazy, not taht I don't use shorthand like that on instant messaging, but for anything legal, or important, you should make every effort to spell everything correctly. I just started reading an excellent book about languages and I have found some very interesting facts in it about languages, its called: Native Tongues by Charles Berlitz, its a facinating read if you are into interesting topics like language.

Answer 6

I thk iss kewl.

Seriously, there has always been argument about spelling and language. It's usually a way of differentiating oneself. "Hey, I do this really different thing from my parents, just like 12 million other people do, therefore I am unique!!"

What is funny is that legal language is probably the most difficult thing to read and comprehend, yet all of our property, credit card agreements, contracts, and deeds are written in that language!!

Answer 7

Well, it is a general part of the dumbing down of the public, and facilitates feudal behavior by corporate entitities. It also widens the gap between the public and the ruling elites. Of course, any alphabetic language is a dumbing down, compared to the memory exercise imposed by image-based Chinese w. 3000 characters working vocabulary. You can see where we are heading..;.

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Answer 8

I think shorthand notation is fine for quick, personal note-taking, but not for conversing with others. As long as everyone remembers the real English language, then the current fad is not a problem.

Answer 9

It is not a good habit. You may do it in places other than on the Internet and get into a lot of trouble for it (like at work). It is best to just type everything out.

Answer 10

It because the level of education our children are receiving has declined, and since so many do not know how to spell, pretty much anything goes. I think it is ridiculous.

Answer 11

It's proof that a certain segment of the population is always willing to truncate their ability to express themselves.

HA...! Write THAT in computer Newspeak.