English language mutilation??

Question

the #'s for letters thing ( 3=e, 4=A...), uber-lazy 1-letter word substitution (r=are, n e=any, u=you...)...AND WHY CAN'T ANYONE USE "you're / your", "their / they're / there"... CORRECTLY?? "NO" is not "KNOW"! "WUT" is not "WHAT"! can't people read & write anymore? what is this? laziness? poor education? this just irks the **** out of me! >_<

to clarify - i meant no offense, i just wanted to know why people misspell commonplace words (ie your / you're, etc.). i understand the numbers and such, are computer shorthand--it's called "tech" or something with an L...? i just don't like the way it looks (personal preference), that's all! i have no gripes against people--my friends use them sometimes, crikies! i don't care who uses them! look what e.e. cummings used to do to HIS poetry sometimes! abstract-looking as all hell, but he still wrote well! i apologize if it sounded insulting, but nobody was a target. after working for 4 1/2 years and receiving a BA in english (creative writing), where they teach you to, and EXPECT you to be able to write well, the shorthand just annoys me, 'tis all i am saying. sometimes i enjoy archaic words myself (thee, thine, etc.) i doubt if Shakespeare wrote today, that he'd use numbers instead of letters, or leave words without their proper lettering, but we may ne'er know! ;)

Answer 1

I absolutely agree with you. I am beginning my college career as an English major, and I get very frustrated when people use shorthand and other lingo when typing, writing, and sometimes even speaking. What have we come to, really? I think it's pathetic that we cannot differentiate between you're/your and their/there/they're. These words are basic - words that we learn in elementary school. It makes me feel like the lack of education among people is scarily growing higher and higher, which does not reflect positively among our future. Although there is not much that we can do about this issue personally, it's nice to know that someone else out there feels the same way about this as I do. Thanks for your opinions. :)

Answer 2

You are right! Sometimes I cannot read the questions either. Well, I suppose it is a time saving " behaviour, tool or what have you" to completely massacre languages in written form. I f anyone ever create a book using those short cuts, I will go nuts.
I can write, I just have problems with punctuation. That is why sometimes I have a tendency to write these really long sentences I think they are run on sentences that really do not mean a thing and I know it must be the most annoying thing in the world to read but give me a break because I need one OK. loll.

Answer 3

People assume that since they're typing all of their responses, then that means that they can shortcut and BS through things without giving any real effort. It's just a reflection of how standards are now substandard, and the truly lazy only have to have minimal production to scrape by. However, that's an entirely different matter, and I won't expound upon it right now.

Answer 4

Frankly, I'm tired of seeing questions like this on Yahoo! Answers.

No offense, but people who think they use "proper" English often don't. So if you're going to throw stones, please be very, very sure that you aren't living in a glass house.

Even a bigger problem to me is that questions like this are often complaints about other dialects of English. And the reason they don't like other dialects of English is they don't like the people who speak them. In other words, it's a way to secretly express prejudice against others.

Language changes constantly. If langauge didn't change, we wouldn't be able to talk about anything new or different. Imagine what English would be like if we were still using the exact same English that was used in Shakespeare's time. We wouldn't have words like "refrigerator", "computer" or "car". No thanks!

Don't fear language change, and please don't criticize people who use language differently from how you use it. I think that users of language are much more savvy with it than the grammar books claim.

ADDITIONAL: As far as the "you're"/"your" question, it's an example that demonstrates that our knowledge of our language doesn't truly contain information about the writing system. If you think about it, people learn to speak English long before they learn to read or write it. Children don't usually start to learn literacy until about age 5 or 6, but they already know how to communicate quite well by then. "You're" and "your" SOUND exactly the same, and our knowledge of how to write the words is external to our knowledge of the sound of the words. So when people write "your" instead of "you're" it's simply that they are not applying their knowledge of the writing system to the knowledge of the writing system. It doesn't mean that they don't know their own language.

Answer 5

Welcome to the new world, where everyone 'texts' messages & take shortcuts for IMing. I keep saying I would love to see some of these people's job applications. Maybe it is the evolution of the next written language?

Answer 6

Bothers me too jman, epecially since it's leaking out from the chat programs and into these kids' academic papers! YIKES!

Answer 7

We are an instant gratification society. Full of shortcuts and slang words.

Answer 8

its not poor education but the effect of chatting and sms... these things can be remotely classified as slangs... they cannot be eliminated but can be reduced....it depends upon how willing we are to do it as it's easier to type u than you in sms and chatting

Answer 9

Hey j-man!!! Seems we have one more thing in common!