An Exasperated English Language Enthusiast

I hate having to admit it, but as I look at my phone, my laptop-- I know that I am a part of the 'short-form' generation, the text-speak generation. A feeling of immense distaste runs through me when I come across sentences and words (at least they're supposed to be) so carelessly thrown around these days. And that happens a lot. All I have to do is open my Facebook home page, post after post, almost every feed reminds me that we're in the midst of an epidemic. One that seems to be worsening with time.

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Not to sound like an exaggerated reactionary but it pains me to see these misdemeanours against the English language. It's like the Slang-demons are waging a war, eating the language (quite literally, don't you think?) and here's the bad news-- they're winning. Every single time you nonchalantly 'go abt ur day', every time 'u hav a gud tym', every one of those occasions where 'there, their and they're' are forever lost in 'der'-- all those times this beautiful language dies a little. *shudders* What is the world coming to?

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Mistakes do happen; those nasty errors creep right past our keen eyes and we err, Lord knows I've made so many errors myself. But how can you defend deliberate distortion of any language. Instant messaging is a major contributor to this downfall. While it would be somewhat pardonable to 'tweet' your thoughts with a character limitation of 140, any other platform is not.

Colloquial and informal correspondences as such are disturbingly influential and before we know it, we're drowning in grammar gaffes and unspeakable spelling crimes, both of which are omnipresent. Our society seems to be blasé and blithe about the quality of our language and with the younger generation already captivated by the means of these ills, they are much more inclined to follow right through to the dark side.

In today's busy world, I agree that there are more important things to be reckoned with. But this doesn't mean that such blatant disregard for the English language should be encouraged or let it slip away unheeded. Easier might translate to faster, but just because you can doesn't mean you should. There's always a certain beauty about quality that gains more appreciation.

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Without language we would be nothing short of what Professor McGonagall would call, a babbling bunch of baboons. That's reason enough to keep the glory of this marvellous language (or any language for that matter) intact and rescue it from this pitiable condition. You don't need to be a language purist, just keep it clean and right.

I'm reminded of what Professor Higgins had to say in 'Pygmalion'; he said, " there even are places where English completely disappears; in America they haven't used it for years." Oh my dear, dear Professor Henry Higgins, you would be appalled to see what has become of it today, oh the horrors to behold!

Signing off with a desperate message.