Tests, Valentine and Xbox or The Internet Language Massacre.

So here I am again, it's 2 in the morning and I'm quite tired, but I felt inspired to write something, this is where I ended up. I must admit, when I first created this blog I wasn't very serious about it, but now I'm actually beginning to like this. I've decided to make each entry in this blog into two parts. One where I write about myself and what's happening in my life, and the other one will be a debate of some sort (most likely gamesrelated, since that's my thing).

So, where to start?
Well, I've been really busy the last week. School is being a pain and keeps tossing tests in my face. Next Monday there's history and on Wednesday there's math. I've never really been a fan of math, too much logic for my taste. History, on the other hand, is more enjoyable. Though I really don't think that it's the subject that's boring, it's mainly about the teacher in my opinion. A great teacher can make the most boring subject fun and interesting, whereas a crappy teacher can completely butcher the opposite.
Valentine's Day has payed it's annual visit as well. I didn't really expect anyone to give me anything, and surprisingly enough I was correct. Not that anyone else I knew got anything either and nor did I ever really care much for Valentine.
I've also made a mental note to myself promising that when my keyboard finally snaps and dies a horrible death I will open it up to see what kind of creatues live there. If you peer down between the keys there's so much food there I think I could open up a restaurant for insects. Okay, maybe not that much food, but I believe that I have created some kind of sentient life down there. Maybe I could breed it and bring it to biology class for top grade. Apart from school I've mainly been playing Xbox 360 on my freetime. A certain person (you know who you are) made me think of getting Guitar Hero III for it, but I just haven't managed to get my lazy butt to buy it. I'll do it soon. Really. Honest.


Anyways, this week I was thinking of writing about the way the internet changes peoples written language. It has many names, ranging all the way from internetspeech to retardspeech. People with the most dreadful English using "u" instead of "you" becomes a regular sight. Being quite the linguistic person it really makes my skin crawl seeing people write like that. However, the oddest part in all this is that some abbreviations are accepted whereas some are not. For example, the phrase "lol" (laugh out loud, for the uneducated) is used frequently by the same people who curse out the ones saying "u". But how bad is it, really? Is it just the youth being lazy, or are we in the transition to a new way of writing. Language has always changed, if you look in older books you can almost instantly see differences in speech. They have more and seemingly "unnecessary" letters (at least they do in old Swedish). Perhaps 50 years in the future people will look back and ask why people took the time to write "you" when "u" does the job just fine. What are the reasons for the changes though? Personally I think that it's a combination of several reasons. One may be, of course, that the person writing doesn't really have any good knowledge of English, and as such uses abbreviations instead of the full words. It's a lot easier to simply write "2" instead of wasting time thinking if it's supposed to be "to" or "too". I wouldn't say that it goes faster writing that way, though. It really doesn't take that much time to press the two extra keys turning "u" into "you". Another reason that seems more likely to me is that people think that's the way you are supposed to write on the internet. I remember when I first began playing Star Wars Galaxies at the age of 12 (I think it was), I wrote in internetspeech because it seemed cool, but as I became friends with several adults who wrote properly I soon began to take influence of them and voíla.
I read an article not too long ago about how this has evolved in the U.S. It stated that some kid in some state had applied for a summer job writing something along the lines of "i want 2 b a counselor because i love 2 work with kids.". Actually that is the exact quote, seeing how I managed to dig up the article (http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-03-31-chat_x.htm). I agree with many of the people in that article saying it's up to the parents to teach their children where what kinds of speech are appropriate (althought I do think that a normal person should be able to tell the difference, but apparantly not).

In conclusion then. The internet isn't destroying our languages, it simply evolves it in a way a lot of us do not like (I being in the latter category). Whether it's here to stay or if it'll go away still remains to be seen.

Now it's time for bed, tomorrow there's studying to be done.