I spotted this story in the Gaurdian via my reader and also noted that OLDaily had also picked up on it and having looked into the impact of txt for quite a while. As Pontydysdu summarized, in order to really get anything out of txt… and to even enter into that world, one needs to have a very strong literate base.

That got me thinking… well that is fine and dandy for the older kids and for adults “looking in”, but what about the little ones coming up? Won’t they just read txt and understand it as text? But then it hit me as I was reading the Guardian article… for the most part, txt is a non standard language, and just as it is an adaptation of language to a media, there is also another factor. Even within a language, there are dialects and this is what requires one to be strongly literate in the base language in order to translate the new form. This is the one bit that makes me feel comfortable in thinking that young kids coming up won’t pick up the short forms of language (necessarily) and take it as the true form – if they do, they won’t be able to understand the other dialects that may or may not be around. This is at least the hope for the abbreviations., because the kicker is… at least this is what I believe… that most of the text that is sent and received is in proper English – save stupid companies that use short forms to be “hip”.

Some supporting quotes:

People think that the written language seen on mobile phone screens is new and alien, but all the popular beliefs about texting are wrong. Its graphic distinctiveness is not a new phenomenon, nor is its use restricted to the young. There is increasing evidence that it helps rather than hinders literacy. And only a very tiny part of it uses a distinctive orthography. A trillion text messages might seem a lot, but when we set these alongside the multi-trillion instances of standard orthography in everyday life, they appear as no more than a few ripples on the surface of the sea of language. Texting has added a new dimension to language use, but its long-term impact is negligible. It is not a disaster.

Although many texters enjoy breaking linguistic rules, they also know they need to be understood. There is no point in paying to send a message if it breaks so many rules that it ceases to be intelligible. When messages are longer, containing more information, the amount of standard orthography increases. Many texters alter just the grammatical words (such as “you” and “be”). As older and more conservative language users have begun to text, an even more standardised style has appeared. Some texters refuse to depart at all from traditional orthography. And conventional spelling and punctuation is the norm when institutions send out information messages, as in this university text to students: “Weather Alert! No classes today due to snow storm”, or in the texts which radio listeners are invited to send in to programmes. These institutional messages now form the majority of texts in cyberspace – and several organisations forbid the use of abbreviations, knowing that many readers will not understand them. Bad textiquette.

Research has made it clear that the early media hysteria about the novelty (and thus the dangers) of text messaging was misplaced. In one American study, less than 20% of the text messages looked at showed abbreviated forms of any kind – about three per message. And in a Norwegian study, the proportion was even lower, with just 6% using abbreviations. In my own text collection, the figure is about 10%.

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