Tuesday, August 4, 2009

B.R.B. A.S.A.P. k?

Just as the future of the gramophone is the iPod and the horse-drawn cart is the V8 engined SUV, the future of the English language is sickeningly, the 'chatting jargon'.
Little acronyms, halved words and techno-talk have wormed into the heart of the English language itself- Yes, the worst has happened, "Web 2.0" has been listed in the Webster's dictionary.
With progression and development, men have felt themselves superior and rather brilliant by concocting complex names to christen their inventions/discoveries/findings.
The SONAR, the LASER, the SARS virus, the Y2K bug, EBIDTA, the ENIAC etcetera.
What happened to the good old days, when people would spend lazy summer mornings sprawled in the sunlit grass, breathing in the fresh air and casting fishing lines into the still pond. Now, we have overweight slobs drooling over their "Macs", "ass-whupping gangstas" in some mindless "PC game". Or even "killin' off losers" in some trashy "PS3/Wii/Nintendo" video game.
Casting away the fact that the movie was too unreal and flimsy and flawed in the story plot structure department, The Sisterhood of Travelling Pants 2 does have a rather heart-melting scene capturing a bit of chemistry between Carmen and Ian, they talk about the dying legacy of English and how the old English used to feel- good and rich to speak, pleasure to your throat, royal and regal.


Carmen Lowell: "Oh, Lady Fortune! Stand you auspicious!" God! Why don't people talk like this anymore? It's just, we've gotten so lazy! We don't say "Oh, Lady Fortune! Stand you auspicious!" We say "Dear God, help me..."
Ian: Or instead of "Enjoy the honey heavy-dew of slumber", "Yo, get some Z's"
Carmen Lowell: It's just... It sounds so good and it feels so good to say. It's rich and luscious.
[Carmen touches her cheek]
Ian: "See how she lays her cheek upon her hand. Oh, that I were a glove upon her hand and I might touch that cheek"
[Carmen blushes]
Ian: See what I mean?
Carmen Lowell: [blushing] Yeah...

More than acronyms(which by the way is an acronym itself. Dear God.), jargon gets to me. A myriad of 'so called chat lingo' has sprung up and infested the Internet like weeds to a garden, ruining the sheer beauty and tranquility of a once glorious language.

A farrago of 'words'(not really words, but you know what I'm getting at) like 'brb', 'ttyl', 'asap', 'g2g', 'idk', 'ily', 'u', 'skol', 'btw' and the ever popular 'k'.

It's quite unnerving to decipher the gibberish, no even better- gobbledygook, that get posted as 'sms' s. Par Example: "hope u f9. cnt cum 2day. sori. wanna mke it up 2 u. tc. hf. ttyl. ily."

I mean, can I at least have the dignity of understanding English the way it's supposed to be understood. Are we so primitive and immature to mix our numbers and alphabets and type out incomprehensible syllables that make no sense when strung together logically?

And don't get me started with the excessive usage of exclamation marks.

Lord help us. Thy fiery might and awesome power shall be the only reasoning pillar in this jungle of madmen. It is you, the erudite, that hold the staff that controls these blabbering buffoons. You the great Linguist who can stop them from brb-ing with their 'techno-junkie-jargon'.


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