The English Language

The advent of the internet and text messaging etc. appears to have dissolved the intellect of the average person to the point that they are incapable of communicating more coherently than a five year old. For example, pointlessly abbreviating words is lazy at best. Really, how much time does typing ‘gr8’ rather than ‘great’ save? Maybe I could collect together all those saved nanoseconds and spend the time curing AIDS. Do people think it makes them look cool? If I send a text message saying ‘R u going 2 the pub? C u l8er’ I’ll be super cool. I will be like a hacker! Check out my l33t skillz yo!

Of course not. In reality I’ll come across as a lazy, ill educated moron.

Only slightly less irritating is the average person’s inability to grasp the correct usage of apostrophes. Just because something is plural is doesn’t automatically gain one. PC’s? No. CD’s? No! Unless you’re saying that something belongs to the CD, leave it alone – it’s CDs. It’s staggering how much ‘professional’ printed material contains this elementary mistake. On that subject, I refuse to take my car to have its MOT test anywhere which has a sign saying MOT's (unless they can prove that Mr Mot owns the place).

While I’m at it, I may as well have a crack at those who cannot fathom the different between there, their and they’re. The general consensus appears to be that if you don’t know the difference you just use there for every eventuality. It seems most adults would implode if faced with the challenge of correctly writing, “They’re going to get their ball from over there”.

The irony of having witnessed, on several occasions, people refer to someone as a ‘looser’ on an internet forum is brilliant. A looser of what exactly? Is that a job title (is it even a word)? Are you inferring that it’s his job to go around and loosen things which are too tight? If so, I’d like to be a Bra Looser please. Where do I sign?

Moving on, I walked into a takeaway the other day and was confronted with a handwritten sign which said, “Cheques only accepted for values ova £5”.

Ova? OVA? Are you bloody kidding me? I was so irritated I nearly punched the chav like girl behind the counter. Eventually I figured it might impede the preparation of my food and I was really hungry. Who, in a commercial customer facing environment, would think it acceptable to use text speak? I barely tolerate it within a text message. Maybe I’m the fool though since I still buy food there.

Anyway, the examples go on and on.

Why does this irk me? I don’t know. I am English and I live in England. We invented the bloody language so it’d be nice to see people I converse with display some ability to use it correctly. The UK’s population is around 60 million. World wide, it is estimated that 375 million people speak English as their first language. If you combine non-native English speakers then the figure soars to a billion or so. Would I like to be picked up on my English by a foreigner who was learning the language at night school? No. But then I have some pride.

I will now, with plenty of forethought, defend myself against the most obvious of retaliatory attacks. Pointing out my written mistakes in general is missing the point as there is a difference between a typo and habitual miss-use. Everybody makes mistakes and that’s not my point; it’s the continued blatantly incorrect use of your own language that should be eradicated, at its very base level. I don’t expect everyone to be able to talk at length about prepositional pronouns but it’s got to be reasonable to expect someone to know the written difference between off and of.