SMS Thumb

I'm not a Luddite but I fear that technology is forcing me to learn an entirely new and uncomfortably foreign language - SMS.

Sure, in the 90's I wore a T-shirt that read "2QT2BSTR8" but now it is the norm for written English to be reduced to the fewest possible characters.

I admit there is a certain game in it, like playing word target or doing crosswords but I am frustrated at seeing "eights" reduced to "ites" and words like Dear and Love, distilled to Dr and Lv. If SMSing to ones physician does one write Dr Dr?

Predicative Text doesn't make it any easier. Try as I might I always end up with Asian instead of Brian and for the amount of time it takes to correctly spell out words, a curt conversation could suffice.

A while ago the Cape Argus carried a story about a pupil who had written an entire school essay in smsese and after my initial horror at the language massacre dissipated, it made sense. Why shouldn't we take the easy option? Sure language is a medium with which to communicate and it doesn't make too much of a bright spark to know that B4 is the opposite of after and CUL8R means to expect company.

For me the risk is about losing the grace and nuance that language provides which cannot come only by communicating the essence. I've noticed how our media seems to be geared at only communicating this and I can't help but think that the frequency with which the Cape Times publishes retractions and corrections is a byproduct of stripping away, either by the writer or the editor. No one wants to read verbose verbiage in a newspaper when a tome of James Joyce will do adequately but we do want to feel that the writer has elegantly thought about the words he uses rather than said the minimum.

Last night a friend suggested how different reading the London Financial Times was from reading our local financial media. Of course its different for a whole bunch of reasons we all understand. I'm not suggesting that we use "Mother England" as the reference for the standard of our written language but I am suggesting that if we use South Africa's demographic profile as an excuse to be lowbrow, we will always talk down.

You may be wondering what this has to do with my nephew? The reason why I suddenly feel my age is that I well remember myself at 13 and the delicious brown satin shirt that I wore open to my navel. My 13-year-old nephew is now also wearing a brown satin shirt but it is so creased it reminds me of the ruffled shirts French fops wore around Louis XV1. He also has his hand bandaged. A sporting injury? Tennis Elbow perhaps? No, SMS thumb!