Remember those glory days when getting a perfect score in your spelling dictation examination was a matter of awe from your peers ?Times when correct spellings,perfect grammar,a well constructed sentence were a necessity for being one of those bright kids.Times when words were not truncated, mutilated or just left to your interpretation.Ah!Those were times when the imperiling tentacles of the SMS-language had not strangled the sanctity of the English language.
SMS or Short Messaging Service,is in keeping with the times.It indeed is a boon in today's daily marathon.Getting yourself across,with the least number of written words.That was the agenda.But then,people stopped having time for typing out a single word.The vowels were the worst hit.People ceased to see their purpose.They became the omitted variables of this age.Some argued that this was in keeping with the spirit of SMS.It was meant to be brief and its purpose,quick response.But then,it confused me.I keep getting painfully long forwarded messages,about values of friendship,love,life and some rather sad and cliched jokes.They are in no ways, brief and certainly not belonging to,what one would call, an exigency.Yet,they are written in the SMS-language which makes it doubly tedious.
I find this situation irritating.It seems like a contagion.Think about it.If you really wanted to thank someone,would writing "Thanks" instead of "Tnx"/"Thx" OR a very generous "Thnx" delay your plans of saving the world? Would adding another "o" and a "r" to " Sry" when you wanted to apologize,make your self-esteem vanish?Can the expanse of something substantial be expressed by just a "Grt"?Do you really care enough to ask someone to "Tk Cr" when you want them to believe that you do?Seriously,whatever did vowels do to you?Do you really mean the three magical words when you do not even have the time/inclination to spell out love and think "Luv" will keep you alive?
And sometimes,in your zeal to be fast and furious,and in your ignorance of words and their connotations,you give us "puritans" heart attacks!What am I supposed to make of a "Cum fast.Cnt wet"!? Sue you for indecent proposals? Ask you whether that's the latest porn movie you got your hands on?Or pat you on your back for the new meaning you've infused into the Beatle's classic Come Together?(Or is it 2gether?)
Some other time,when asked where you are,you say,"In rum".A lovely imagery for me,but then don't get my hopes up if you cannot offer me one!
I abhor it.And I dread the fact that SMS language has now become a part of the written word too.Be it social networking sites or the new age fast(crap) novels,they are here,and seems like they are here to stay.
But seriously,is this our way of saving time?Is this our transgression to being the "new intellectual" where guessing the word is a daily exercise?Or is it just a sorry excuse for our lack of sensitivity for the language,for words,for what they mean,for whom they are meant for?The wide-spread disregard for writing words as they should be, resulting in distortions galore,might lead us to a point,someday,when we will not even have the time(or the inclination) to communicate via words.Maybe,we shall communicate via waves,colours,radio signals or some kind of weird futuristic mode from a bad sci-fi movie.A future that will resemble the remote past and we shall become like monkeys with great gizmos!
I shudder to think of the scenario.I am all for the economy of words.But when words,by itself are mangled,and English becomes a sorry specter of left-overs,it is not unreasonable for a lover of the language and the words to ask these brilliant new-age linguists in their own language to just "Gv me a brk!" and practice some precis writing!!
