No LOL for all this lazy text speak
Monday 29th August 2011, 12:15PM BST.
You know the world has turned on its head when older people think they are down on the street with the kids, writes our Grumpy Old Man Bill McCarthy.
Throughout the generations, youngsters have had their own culture – from teds, to hippies and from mods and rockers to punks.
Usually they have been literate if at most times pig ignorant. I know, I was one of the aforementioned groups.
But text speak is surely one of the most insidious developments of the modern communication age.
We are familiar with youngsters’ fingers flying over the keys as they send messages to their pals.
Trouble is, many can barely construct a sentence and seem incapable of picking up a book, or Kindle, and reading. Worse still, it has spread to the older generation. A middle-aged farmer had a sign advertising eggs free-range eggs for sale.
Eggs 4 sale, the message read. It couldn’t be more lazy. LOL, U R JJ, I thought.
Text and message have somehow become the verbs, texting and messaging, while social websites from being useful contact media have turned into yob-inhabited, X-rated play areas for the barely literate and no-go areas if you are offended by drivel.
*****
As pig ignorant behaviour goes, perhaps the worst of all are those on public transport, particularly buses, who decide it’s time to put on the nosebag and have a spot of lunch
Not content on chewing like a bovine at a hay bale, they are quite happy to drone on with their mouths full, salivating and spattering fellow travellers with crumbs and other unmentionable waste.
A pelican bib might cure the problem.
******
A pet hate has been hugely amplified over the school holidays which are, mercifully, drawing to a close.
You see a couple of shoppers, totally oblivious to the world around them, park their shopping trolley in the middle of a busy shopping aisle for a chat . They block off the aisle and then wonder why other shoppers are blowing a collective fuse.
It makes you wonder if they have been on hallucinogenic drugs.
That’s bad enough, but then the ankle biters use the trolleys as climbing frames. Well, I suppose it’s cheaper than the zoo.
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I have people talking the text too me on the phone as i run my own business,it does my head in,i wan dis, i wan dat they say and init,i ask ask them to speak english if not i just put the phone down, simple.
no wonder the generations of kids are getting thicker!
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Young, dumbed down, comprehensive educated Sun readers; what can we do with them. ill the academies and collegiate produce any better? I doubt it. To make matters worse we have a Eton educated, Oxbridge toffs running the country… What can we older oiks do?
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Why do some people think it’s fashionable? It takes longer for me to read and comprehend text-talk, than if the sender had just used plain English. I can understand some words being simplified for bandwidth purposes, but not most.
I come from a generation brought up on the belief that if you don’t try to use correct spelling and grammar, then you shouldn’t expect your words to be taken seriously. I hope this craze dies out along with chav culture, although looking around the Midlands..I think that might be a while.
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1.
“no wonder the generations of kids are getting thicker!”
What a pig ignorant comment that is, please don’t talk such drivel! I suppose you are one of these single track minded fools whop assume that examinations are getting easier year upon year, hence the increase in higher grades.
Do you not think it is because the majority of children of today, from honest hardworking families are taking them more serious than in genrations past. Most of the children and young people that I know are very well spoken, and have a comprehensive grasp of the English language and vocabulary.
Please do not be blinded by the blotches on society such as ASBO’s and chav’s . . . there are still plenty of decent folk out there!
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“you are one of these single track minded fools whom assume that examinations are getting easier” nothing to do with examinations, who wants a nation of pen pushers all the time, i never took any exams had no interest but im a business owner and never been so well off! and i will not employ people who play on mobile phones, sendin dis n dat!!!!!
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