LL-L "Language learning" 2005.11.29 (01) [E]

Wed Nov 30 06:21:59 UTC 2005

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   L O W L A N D S - L * 29 November 2005 * Volume 01
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From:  "Ben J. Bloomgren" <Ben.Bloomgren at asu.edu>
Subject:  LL-L "Language learning" 2005.11.28 (06) [E]

Oh Críostóir!

It was only a matter of time before teenagers started answering their
exams in
txtspk, and as far as I'm concerned most teenagers clearly think that "u"
and "r"
are actual standard forms for "you" and "are" and that "ur" is pronounced
[jor]not [ur].

  Perhaps we're all just old and out of touch?

I just turned twenty-four on 20 November, and I believe what you say with
all my heart. When I send text messages, I end up hearing the angry beeps of
the phone because I take too much space. Heaven forbid that I actually use
the punctuation marks added on the 1, star and 0 keys! I'm also a "true
blue", "red-blooded American." I quote it not out of shame but out of the
fact that others may not know what it means.
Ben

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From:   "Sandy Fleming" <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject:  LL-L "Language learning" 2005.11.28 (06) [E]

>From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
>Subject: L-L "Language learning" 2005.11.27 (02) [E]
>
>  Not helped by text messaging encouraging mass illiteracy.
>
>  It was only a matter of time before teenagers started answering their
>exams in
>txtspk, and as far as I'm concerned most teenagers clearly think that "u"
>and "r"
>are actual standard forms for "you" and "are" and that "ur" is pronounced
>[jor]
>not [ur].
>
>  Perhaps we're all just old and out of touch?
>
o_O spk4urself ENOTOUTOFTOUCH -_-

Are you really serious, Críostóir, that _most_ teenagers _clearly_ think
that these are _actual_ standard forms?

Or are we just having another round of youth-bashing based on broad
stereotypes? In which case have you noticed how grumpy old people seem
to be these days?  :)

Surely with the rise of blogging and personal web pages, written
literacy has never been higher in young people?

Tom McRae wrote:

  "Nowadays I find many young folks have difficulties in reading a page of
text let alone a book."

My experience of this is that at certain schools it does happen. I know of 
one
school where a friend of mine took a job as librarian and she was surprised 
to find
that many of the children could hardly read, so that there is now the 
ridiculous
situation where children are beginning to read because the librarian is 
helping
them.

On the other hand, consider the success of Harry Potter. These books sell in
stupendous numbers and are actually being read by children everywhere. 
Nothing like
it has ever happened before, and it's had a knock-on effect so that children 
keep on
reading other books. Some of my friends are now concerned about their 
children
because they walk to school and go without lunch all week so that they can 
spend
their lunch and bus money on books for the weekend (or in one case, 
electronic
components...).

In a recent conversation about books an older (and therefore clearly grumpy 
and
neophobic :) person was amazed to realise that something I said implied that 
I'd
read a whole book in a single day. At which point an eighteen-year-old said, 
"I
know, I get through two a day sometimes"!

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: "heather rendall" <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject:  LL-L "Language learning" 2005.11.28 (06) [E]

Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>  Perhaps we're all just old and out of touch?<

I read a report in a newspaper that an American publisher was going to
allow 'I would of' in future because ' so many people say and use it and
languages are always developing'.

I am all for not fossilising language BUT there are surely some limits as
to allowing development to be based on ignorance or lack of
understanding??????

Heather

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From: "Andy Eagle" <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject:  LL-L "Language learning" 2005.11.28 (06) [E]

Crostoir  wrote>
>
> Tom McRae wrote:
>   "Nowadays I find many young folks have difficulties in reading a page of
> text let
> alone a book."
>
>   Not helped by text messaging encouraging mass illiteracy.

No! A new form of literacy appropriate to the medium where only 160
characters per message are available.
Shorthand makes sense. Remember the telegraph?
>
>   It was only a matter of time before teenagers started answering their
> exams in
> txtspk, and as far as I'm concerned most teenagers clearly think that "u"
> and "r"
> are actual standard forms for "you" and "are" and that "ur" is pronounced
> [jor]
> not [ur].

Is that not perhaps an urban myth?

>   Perhaps we're all just old and out of touch?

That'll be more like it;-)

Andy Eagle

----------

From: "Paul Tatum" <ptatum at blueyonder.co.uk>
Subject:  LL-L "Language learning" 2005.11.28 (06) [E]

Hello all, a chara, (or should it be: a charaid?)

Críostóir wrote:

>   Not helped by text messaging encouraging mass illiteracy.

though spelling does often change when the writing material changes,
like the change from manuscript to printing. What about txt msgs in
languages other than English? Are Dutch, German et al. showing the same
sort of abbreviations, etc?

>   Perhaps we're all just old and out of touch?

uh-uh. me definitely. Can't keep up the pace of staying in touch.

My English teacher once marked my rough notes which i had left in my
exercise book instead of my homework and corrected my mistaken 'could
of', written for 'could have' - now it seems rare for (younger) people
to write 'could have'- I think for some speakers that the 'have' is no
longer a verb.

  I was taught with phonetic alphabet quite early and even then (I seem
to remember) I thought that it was peculiar and I knew it was not
'proper writing'. It seems to me that it teaches  incorrect spelling and
then you have to relearn at a later date than if you had learned
correctly in the first place, so in the end it slows down the learning
process. Also, I think that the English spelling of monosyllabic words
is consistent enough to teach the principle that one letter has one
sound and one sound has one letter, which is what the proponents of
phonetic spelling claim is its advantage for initial contact with
writing. Perhaps the real problem is that English needs eventually to
reform its orthography to be more phonetic - after all, 'the kidz' are
spelling phonetically, and it doesn't look like they're going to learn
standard spelling before leaving schoool. But when it comes down to it I
don't think it's just a problem with spelling, our (England) whole
attitude to schools and learning seems pretty negative. Children seem
happy to learn in primary and junior school but by the time they get to
secondary school learning is resisted or just plain ignored.

c u l8r doodz, Paul Tatum.

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