Destroying or Creating a New Language

Time is not only money, but arusher. Besides being a human creation, time has also become an unstoppable centrifugal power in modern society. Nobodyand nothing are out of its scope. Time is the centre of all excuses and plans because everything is measured or valued accordingtothe time it takes. As a result, our lives are remarkably conditioned by this mythological godChronosand his laws.

At present, we are living in a speeding-up century and everything is wanted to be faster. With a snap of fingers or a click you could have almost the whole world at your doorstep, have any kind of information, buy anything from ten thousand miles home and get it in a week at least, pay all your bills and chat with as many friends or contacts you want to. In short, the creature has become the master.

Even language has been rushed by this invisible tick-tack. Social networks and mobile devices are forcing human creativity until zipping language into codes and symbols to safe time texting. Experts have called it for a long time language economy, but now it has been turning into a kind of parallel language that you should know, if you are studying English as a foreign language.

Language economy is not exclusive to English. Several languages use this way to shorten long names, phrases and scientific phenomena. Among the different language economy methods you could form an acronym which is a new word built from the initial letters or groups of letters in a set phrase and pronounced as a separate word like LASER, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, RADAR, Radio Detection And Ranging and SWAT, Special Weapons And Tactics.

However, there is a spectacular result out of acronyms. They not only turn into new words, but also are used as almost every part of speech. Sometimes, these new words can even eclipse their initial meanings and be treated like common nouns or verbs such as table or give. That is the example of TASER, Thomas A. Swifts Electric Rifle. This acronym of a dangerous and painful electrical gun has not only become a noun, but also a verb. You can hear or read that someone has been tasered by a cop or that girl tasered myheart with her eyes.

Lately, it has been appearing a new way to form abbreviations called vowel omission. This method deals with a witty strategy of deleting vowels to create a more difficult result to be deciphered. Perhaps this secrecy is not intentional, but undoubtedly it tests any sharp mind. Only the frequent contact with this kind of terminology may be the only way to understand it. This practice occurs mostly among teenagers or chatters who are constantly improvising to shorten words to safe time typing them.

Vowel omission (from now onVO) is predictable, but not all the cases are so easy to decode. Some of the most usualVOs aremsg[message],thn[then],vry[very],nw[now],bqz/cz/ [because] andthnx[thanks]. The method seems to besimple. You only have to omit vowels,punctuation marks and capital letters. This way, a vo text would be sry I cnt mk it on tm/ trffics trrbl nd I jmd/ which means Sorry, I cant make it on time. Traffics terrible and Im jammed.

At first approach vo is easy and fun too, but there is more. If you want to go with the flow, you must add emoticons and numbers. So, texting a message or txtn a msg with numbers could be way more ingenious. 121 is the code to invite yourchat contact to a private chat room, 143 means I love you, so 1432 means I love you too. Moreover, the acronym l.o.l laugh out loud is not impressive anymore. Now, you could find in your teen sibling or kids chat history [always with their permission] 55555. This line offives means l.o.l because in Thai the number 5 is pronounced /ha/.

Whatever this way of communication will finish being is now creating a parallel language which is emerging naturally and uncontrolled in front of our eyes. Nonetheless, it cannot andmust not be stopped. Perhaps, we are just witnessing a brand new language or nothing more than an outburst of creativity in the digital native generation. Just in case, c u sn! [See you soon.]