Thursday, August 10, 2006

Weird spellings - a pain

Just take a look at these few lines.
  • hey.. i dunno bout dis blog
  • wats wron wit da photo
  • Ur r8
  • yo der
These were scraps I got on my orkut account. Can you guess which language this is? It is supposed to be english. The only english word I find here is photo. Fortunately that person has not used foto. I don't know when and how such a craze for spellings started. When I first got into touch with e-mail and messengers, I really found extremely difficult to understand such sentences. But now I am able to cope up with these pathetic spellings. Yet, there have been numerous occasions when I have bulbed over what the other person is trying to tell. Example was yo der. I initially thought it was German. I couldn't understand it until that person told me that it meant "you there". How the hell am I supposed to understand it?

I suppose such spellings were being used to reduce the time to type. But frankly speaking, I really don't understand how such spellings improve your typing speed. Just take the example of you, how much longer is it going to take you to type a 'u' after 'yo'? Surely not more than a fraction of a second. Surely it would help you to reduce your time to type if long words were shortened but not for such small words. If you were such a horrible typist that you need to search for the letters, then chatting and orkutting is not your cup of tea and if you still wished to continue to do so, then it would make sense to use such spellings. On the other hand, even if you didn't know formal typing technique, if you spent time with a PC, your typing speed would have improved. Then why do you continue to use such spellings? Why do you want to kill english? The funniest part is that such people use unnecessary puncuations like some 4 or 5 '?' or ',' and unnecessary letters when they are not required. For example, I have seen people using okie for ok. Why the extra ie? It is really a mystery to me. I have not been able to understand the psychology of such people.

And the worst part is each one has his own convention. Some one types right as r8, someone else types ryt and an other types rite. I don't know why there are numbers between words. Crazy people. These spellings are not universal and people use it to their own whims and fancies. I am sure no one here would read a word by reading letter by letter. Then why use spellings like 'ur' which is pronounced by calling out each letter individually?

Sadly, it is so deep rooted in people's minds that such letters are being sometimes used even in formal circumstances. Forunately, I have not been caught into this mania of using weird spellings.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Scraps and Messages are meant to be like that cuz you don't write out a letter there. It's meant to be short and so the sort forms. The whole Okie for ok is a creative side. And you are too stuck up in your head and so you are unable to take such changes.
I agree on how thins has taken over the formal vocabulary and is not good. it's the only thing I agree on. Otherwise there aint anything wrong with "usin short formz"!

7:31 AM, August 10, 2006  
Blogger Benkiman said...

it is people like you who have decided that scraps are meant to be written in short. cut out on the unnecessary articles and prepositions and write something like a newspaper headline if you want to keep it short in stead of screwing up spellings. just imagine newspaper headlines having such pathetic spellings. if possible develop a universal spelling such that every one can understand.

10:01 AM, August 10, 2006  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

^read my comment fully and react!

11:20 AM, August 10, 2006  
Blogger Benkiman said...

i think i have read your comment fully and then only have posted a comment. and i don't know what you are expecting. anyway one thing i realise is that i won't be able to convince you. maybe you will.

"And you are too stuck up in your head and so you are unable to take such changes"- this is not true at all. i am pretty easily convincable and probably i too will agree upon this language craze. but at present i feel it is foolish.

5:10 PM, August 10, 2006  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hey.. totally with u on the spellings thing.i also used to wonder quite a bit when i read those things..

im so used to it now,that i get sucked into it involuntarily.. maybe i'll pull all stops to break the habit..thanks!

6:37 AM, August 19, 2006  
Blogger The Ignoramus said...

this is supposedly a sentence in a mail sent by an employee in my company:

"shl gt bk 2 u sn".

The side effect of excessive usage of short forms is just this.

11:11 PM, August 22, 2006  

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