Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all: Sir Winston Churchill
CAMPUS NOTES
‘Thanx’ instead of ‘Thanks’ might hold the same meaning for many but the interchange of letters which is ‘X’ instead of ‘S’ has totally ruined the real meaning and essence of the word.
TS Eliot, a famous social critic, literary and a poet, while penning down one of his poems has termed ‘Poetry’ as a tool to refine the language of time and prevent it from changing too rapidly.
But with the passage of time, the refinement of a language is perhaps practiced only among few philosophers and writers but hardly among the masses and Eliot’s mention about preventing language from changing too rapidly, to some extend has been forgotten.
Can one blame this on the ever changing lifestyles, the way people speak or write or maybe lack of time?
Technology has come a long way and in course of its journey, technology has eased the burden of men in several ways.
Similarly, the introduction and usage of the cell phones has become very popular among the people and students and it seems people couldn’t function the whole day without a cell phone in their pockets.
This is found mostly among students, who are seen pressing the buttons of the cell phones (keypads) the whole day if not, playing with it, or listening to music.
Daily usage of a cell phone especially among the students has had an adverse impact on the language spoken be it any kind of languages.
The ‘SMS’ language popularly known among mobile phones users has degraded the essence of a language and the formation of words and letters has been reduced to a scrap which conveys the same meaning but somehow fails to treat the word the way it should be.
Some view it as a destruction of the English Language.
The primary motivation for the creation and use of SMS language was to convey a comprehensive message using the fewest number of characters possible.
“To save time, I would simply use shortcuts words like-Im bz, il cal u later, il c u later and etc”, a student said adding that the message is automatically understood by the end receiver and this would save a lot of time and space.
The student’s perception might hold true to some extent and when looked at, the so called SMS language does save a lot of time and space.
But, from the point of view of language, usage of SMS language has cost the students dear during exams.
“Sometimes, in a hurry, I tend to write the SMS language instead of the correct (language) and this might be because we are so used to typing in shortcuts and I admit that this is bad for us”, a student of St Mary’s College admitted.
Commenting on the extensive use of SMS language among the students, a professor of English said that students should understand where to use short cuts language and where it should be avoided.
“It is very disrupting and disappointing to see students preferring a second-hand style of writing while ignoring the original style. This can destroy the meaning of the word and the English language as a whole”, he said.
Though it is virtually impossible to totally stop the usage of the SMS language, the schools and elders have a role to play in discouraging students from using the second-hand style of writing. (By Ibankyntiew Mawrie)