The Internet Is Killing the English Language

I know it's never a good idea to make sweeping bold generalizations about anything. However, I think it is readily apparent to anyone who has browsed a social networking site that the English language is dying a slow death in terms of spelling, grammar, composition, and more. I'd say vocabulary, too, but I'm not sure the internet is killing that so much as the sheer apathy of this nation's citizens to learn more words.

What is clear to me is that our nation's youth (who grow or have grown into our nation's adults) feel that they are being let loose in their language when typing a message, a status update, or a treatise on weekend social inebriation. I don't know who is letting them do this, but it isn't I. The idea that Facebook or MySpace, for example, is not grading its users or preventing them from succeeding at a high level job creates this idea of great personal freedom to relax, for lack of a better word, their grammar. This, in and of itself, is a problem because many areas, exterior to Facebook and MySpace, are not as forgiving. I will note, though, that indeed, climbing the career ladder does not result in getting tagged in someone's photos of debauchery and will not get you three more pigs for your farm. Applying for welfare will not poke you back. And certainly, no matter how high your grade is on that English thesis paper, it will not like your status (not even in matters of irony).

The Internet has fueled an instant reward system that growing people value more than long-term rewards. Television is not helping, either. The Hills and Jersey Shore are more than exemplary in demonstrating that you can be dumb as dirt, one-dimensional, and embody all the poorer characteristics of being human and still succeed in life - success here is determined by fame or popularity and money. There's no major need to be smart. It may seem completely related, but I digress a little in that it does not require a great intelligence to have minimal mastery over the language you've been speaking since you were a child. It really doesn't.

That leads me to cell phones. I will not deny that it does require major effort to type entire words in a text message on a numeric keypad. I became a rampant texter myself when I still had a Motorola Razr, which does not have a full slide-out keyboard or a touch screen. But I persisted. I persisted because I could not fathom to send even my least-liked of friends a message stating, "LOL. I kno bcz she tot nds new bewbs." I'm not even entirely sure that's how someone would type an abbreviated text message, but it demonstrates a point if I have one at all. What I do hope I am conveying is somehow this need for brevity translated onto the Internet though the Internet itself predated the cell phone boom. I fail to understand that given a full keyboard and some minor typing skills why someone cannnot type full, clear English words nearly as quickly as it takes to type what I consider to be the brain's version of excrement.

Worse still is the majority response to my umbrage is "It doesn't matter. It's the internet. LOL." (I'll get to "LOL" later or in another post entirely.) Is that true? Does it really not matter solely because it is the internet? I can tell you it most certainly is not. A friend of mine, who is a teacher for the English department at a university, has vouched that he has received essays, entire essays, in "text speak." Maybe my brain is on another echelon, but I have enough trouble as it is reading the one to two sentences that people often type as their FaceBook statuses in text speak. To read an entire essay, which I should hope my friend does not, is another threat to my sanity entirely. This is where we delve into the slight possibility that schools and workplaces might even accept this drivel as standard.

If you are with me at all on this, you might think to yourself that that possibility is so slight it is practically non-existent. To that, I point out to you that a quick glance at the writings of our ancestors (or yours; I was born in a different country) will reveal that nobody wrote like we do during the time of the founding of our country. Admittedly, the most popular works were awfully romanticized in their English use, and there definitely were those who spoke like a scullery maid, but you have to realize the Constitution was written in what people then would consider English. As much as I love this language and all it has to offer, that document is Greek to me. Yes, I can grasp what is written, but it just does not read as easily to me as writings of contemporary society. I can read today's legal jargon with a lot less stumbling than I could read The Scarlet Letter (which is a verbose piece of garbage anyway).

More or less, English is changing, and the majority influences its direction. So my fear is that 100 years from now, text speak will become the norm. On top of that, I can't imagine what the literati will be speaking. I am only assuaged in that I am sure that form of "evolution," if you will, will not occur for quite some time and ideally after I'm dead. In the meantime, I attempt to correct and I metaphorically bring my red pen to every forum, but are my corrections followed by asterisks really making a difference? If all of us jumped on the grammar Nazi boat, do we have the power to change the flow of language? I am severely doubtful. Furthermore, I know the problem is present in other languages, too, though I do not know to what extent. At the very least, it is bad spelling.

As a little aside, I do wonder if the situation is poor at all in Hebrew, my birth country's language. Written Hebrew is comprised generally of consonants, and vowels are not placed unless there is a need for that sort of differentiation. Some consonants stand to represent possible vowel sounds, but that's it. For example, if we were to apply it to English, the sentence, "David cooks an omelette," would be written, "Dvd cuks an omlt," where vowels in that sentence demonstrate where there would be some indicator of the correct vowel sound for that word. The difference, which I cannot demonstrate well is that switching around letters in Hebrew, which would be just a typographical error in English resulting in a fairly recognizable word still, actually results in completely different words being written. Hebrew is dependent on the order in which the consonants are written, so I'd like to believe even an imbecile in Israel would notice that he just typed the wrong word entirely. I can't prove any of this without going and looking, but it is a curiosity.

Meanwhile, keep your red pen handy.