hi wu r u @ ofis v r
w8ing 4u s imtng pcm l8r oic
r v mtg 2nite wud b l8
4 prty
Does that sound
Cryptic? Weird? Strange? As the technology is breeding over, mobile services
and its application has entered day-to-day bustle. Once a luxury has become an
acute inevitability. The positive influence is that it is affordable, best
means of
communication and
contact, messaging service, encompassing range and its shape & size. All is
fine until it knocks our door heavily. But, irony is that we use the technology
not because of its adequacy. Instead our dimensions are diminishing and
degrading with the way we are bestowing it.
As you can see the
above conversation, none of the words are complete except “Hi”, and some of
them seem to be senseless. Its a cruel truth that SMS-Short Messaging Service
is growing from Short to Shorter and Shorter to Shortest. And what are we
conceding in all this is a big question. What triggered me to write all this
were two scenarios.
a) My tutor during a
conversation said an examination answer sheet comprised of some short forms that are used in
SMS.
b) After this, I kept
watching all the mails I receive and some of the chat sessions I had with my
family and friends. If we could provoke further, the results are alarming.
An examination paper
with short terms instead of formal, complete answers and our normal day-to-day
conversations are no more in complete forms. ‘SMS’ was the term introduced for
the mobile services with restricted display. But, what is actually stopping us
in using the complete, sensible, flawless and meaningful sentences and words in
mails and chat sessions, where we have ample of space for body text. Is it our
laziness or eagerness in conveying a message or just a wavy attitude to ignore
it! If we could put aside all our reasons and become a bit result oriented we
have far reaching adverse consequences. The key aspect is due to unnecessary
usage of short forms by which the essence of language is lost.
It’s not only the
grammatical mistakes in sentence formation, but over a period of time the word ‘grammar’
is logically ruled out of our dictionaries. Usage of punctuations, parts of
speech, our vocabulary in written and spoken language just flies away in a star
lit night.
Literary works such as
poetry, essays, novels etc lose their prominence. Classical works written by Shakespeare and
Wordsworth seems to generate running stars in our brains. Basically, when these
short forms are used by younger generations, the impacts are still worse.
Children learning ‘English’ literally get confused by different usage patterns.
As they get acquainted to slangs, the word ‘thankq’ makes no difference from
‘Thank you’. ‘gud luk’ is as good as ‘Good Luck’. The word ‘luv’ is as sweet as
‘Love’. ‘ez’ is easier than ‘easy’. They land up in a state of confusion when
they don’t find meanings or synonyms for ‘wanna’ or ‘gonna’ in a dictionary.
So, the one which takes a back
seat here is just not only the written language but also the original
traditional reading habits, and failing to understand the literary works. The
days are not far where we need to have an oxford dictionary beside us to read
an English newspaper.
To the one who is
still confused with our conversation at start, let us put them to comfort. “Hi,
What’s up? Are you at Office? We are waiting for you.”
“Yes, I am in a
meeting, please call me later.”
“Oh! I see, are we
meeting tonight?”
“Yes, I would be late
for the party.”
Think about it, what
are we compromising with and does it worth the value of what we are loosing on the other
hand.
Disclaimer: This article was penned during 2004 during my US stay and is a very old one which was published 13 years ago on few external sites. Now just publishing the same
on my blog.
