LOL, textspeak in the dictionary!

So small ‘c’ conservatives have been running around crying out about the debauchment of our national tongue, condemning the so-called “devolutionary changes” featured in the March 2011 release of the Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oh My God, trust the Oxfordians to be so rebellious.

And what is all this fuss and palaver over? Well, although internet slang has long been commonplace on sites like Twitter and Facebook, its recent inclusion in the OED Online marks a growing shift of ‘textspeak’ passing into common vernacular. And the traditionalists are not happy at all, nope, not one bit.

OMG (oh my god), LOL (laugh out loud) and FYI (for your information) now join others like TMI (too much information) and BFF (best friends forever) in the online edition of the premier English dictionary, which is certain to cause havoc amongst geriatrics at the Old Age Pensioner Scrabble Olympics… if there is one. Ok, I just googled it, crisis averted.

The OED justified these new inclusions by noting that on the Internet or in texts, “initialisms are quicker to type than the full forms, and (in the case of text messages, or Twitter, for example) they help to say more in media where there is a limit to a number of characters one may use in a single message.” Yes because less is clearly more on the internet. Most people use the internet whilst multitasking, so by stretching their already vacuous intellects across more than one medium, it seems fairly probable that the online world isn’t going to “say more” when limitations are enforced. Still, it might be interesting from a scientific point of view: how to watch the stupid find new, intelligent ways to express their stupidity.

This is perhaps why some have disagreed with the decision to admit the virally popularised acronyms. There is a suggestion that these terms – and the colloquial lingo within which they feature – mark the gradually erosion of our language. “Just think, if we let these expressions into our beloved English then before you know it we will all be jabbering like monkeys, using grunts and hand gestures to communicate.”

As much as it sounds like I agree with them, my real issue is not with the language itself so much as the people involved: both those who mindlessly devote enough of their lives to technology that they create almost an entirely new language and those with nothing better to do than complain about it. And here I am complaining about them, making me no better than the spectators of some awful forced orgy between a mushroom and some camels; repulsed but unable to turn away. Everyone wins.

I mean to say, believe me here, I cannot stand the abbreviations which comprise modern day ‘textspeak’, but purely on a functional rather than linguistic level. For instance, in order to understand what someone means when they ‘BRB,’ or whatever the hell it is they do, I need to embarrassingly traipse through an online site and translate their statement into comprehensible English. This makes me feel like a mentally-impoverished pleb, ill-advised to be on the internet in case my ineptitude leads me onto an adult site which will always (do you hear me, ALWAYS) show up on my history whenever an acquaintance asks to borrow my laptop for just thirty seconds.

Crucially however, the problem in this situation is mine and mine alone, and I’m well aware the onus is on me to rectify this situation. The development of language should always be applauded, particularly if it is in a functional and sensible way. These new words didn’t lead me onto nakedhotbabes.com and nor has any abbreviation ever hurt anyone. Apart from CREEP if you happen to be called Richard Nixon.

Anyway, for those traditionalists who continue to complain, let us not forget, Shakespeare spelt his name differently on each of the six occasions he was known to have written it. And don’t get me started on bloody Chaucer; a man who, by today’s standards, was so dyslexic that he would have been banished to a ‘special help’ class and never given the chance to write anything as brilliant or funny as The Canterbury Tales. So, as the gap between then and now is over 400 years, it would seem that old school language snobs can hardly defend the preservation of archaic language.

But they still do, and not for the right reasons. You can hate the changes because they leave you feeling old and confused, you can disagree with the culture which inspires them, but why hate the words themselves and the progression of language? It happens, get over it. Time will lead to new developments and the good ones stick around. Darwin called it evolution, Dixies call it blasphemy. Which are you?

KTHNXBAI.