Text Speak - a Vent

vyle

spike7451 wrote: »

It's a sign of the change in values,same as in some cases,game consoles have replaced physical exercise which has added to the obesity epidemic in our once great country...

If it wasn't games consoles, it'd be TV. Parental laziness has contributed just as much to obesity (and poor spelling and grammar) as anything else.

Why entertain the kids, or engage them in activities when TV can act as a babysitter.

Why cook a proper meal when you can microwave some slop and press the tray into the child's trotters? Why teach it to eat properly at the table when it's so happy to gawp at the TV?

Why teach the child how to speak, to spell, to write and to read when TV has educational programs, and if they fail, well, life skills are taught at school anyway (because apparently parents think it's acceptable to send non-potty trained children who can't recognise their own name to school these days).

It's more than just games consoles.

Case in point, I got my first console when I was four. By that point, I knew the alphabet and was semi proficient at spelling (well, by 4 year old standards - I could sound letters together to produce something that sounded like the word: Esd to my mind spelt "Ee-ss-duh" for Easter).

I was, and still am active. I walk three miles to and from work every day, saving bus fare both ways. As a child, I was easily one of the fittest in my year, studied martial arts, and loved running, despite also being an avid gamer.

Thanks for my first games console being a commodore 64, I ended up copying the programming code from magazines so I could play games by the time I was 6.

Games also taught me the structure of stories. The Legend of Zelda on the SNES had me playing with dictionary in hand so I could read up what cataclysm meant, what Pegasus was and more besides.

But that's because my parents taught me to take an interest in things and to be active, whereas a lot of parents barely notice if their child is trying their best to smash a pair of £130 3D glasses, let alone take the time to encourage them to learn anything outside of school.

Also: I hate TXT lingo outside of text messages, too.

Blacksheep1979

MothballsWallet wrote: »

Text speak on computers actually comes from the days of dial-up internet connections when the connection speed was really slow (75 bits per second), and being charged by the minute, it was important to fit as much into your message as possible in a smaller space. Since most people have broadband internet connections these days, this isn't so important now.

Sorry, but what are you on about? When the internet became mainstream speeds were in the kilobit range and I seriously doubt anyone using 'text speak' would have been using the internet prior to then. Even if they were only using something antiquated with <100bps ascii only uses 8 bits for a char and unicode 16 therefore you'd have to be typing constantly at over 540 chars/min or 270 chars/min with unicode to have an issue.

Text speak comes from laziness and poor education.

caz2703

Text speak - it's not big and it's not clever.

But it's handy for saving the cost of an extra text message

Mk14:37

People who keep saying "literally", as in, "I literally died!".

If you had literally died, then I wouldn't have to stand here listening to your abuse of the English language, would I?!

PhylPho

People who can't tell the singular from the plural, especially in rants: 'the Government are to blame!" Wot, both of 'em?

trisontana

Another problem with "text speak" concerns those visually impaired people who use "speak aloud" software on their computers."Txt spk" just confuses it and makes it "speak" nonsense.

My pet hate is people who can't tell the difference between "advice" and "advise", and "lose" and loose".

Malory

trisontana wrote: »

Another problem with "text speak" concerns those visually impaired people who use "speak aloud" software on their computers."Txt spk" just confuses it and makes it "speak" nonsense.

Also, internet forums often have members who do not speak English as a first language. Understanding a foreign language is difficult enough. Trying to figure out the text-speak version of that language must be a nightmare.

pimento

geri1965 wrote: »

Facebook is worse than forums though, I find - probably because it has a lot of younger people on.

Some of my contemporaries (50s) on Facebook use text speak. Their spelling is atrocious too.

My bete noir is "loose" and "lose". Loads of people don't know the difference. Oh and "tennant" when you mean "tenant". That lager company have a lot to answer for!

Freddie_Snowbits

LadyDee wrote: »

How refreshing - it's not just me!

I luv freddy speek:beer::beer::beer:

Darksun

MothballsWallet wrote: »

Text speak on computers actually comes from the days of dial-up internet connections when the connection speed was really slow (75 bits per second), and being charged by the minute, it was important to fit as much into your message as possible in a smaller space. Since most people have broadband internet connections these days, this isn't so important now.

Care to tell me when connection speeds were ever that slow? The slowest modem I've ever seen is 1200bps, and that's going waay back.

If you want to be picky, you could say that is started from telegrams where you were charged by the character. But various forms of abbreviations and shortening of language has been used for different reasons going back to ancient greek and latin