A New Language?

Maybe I'm too old.  Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.  Maybe I just liked the English language the way it was meant to be.  This new text and Facebook lingo just hurts my eyes and gives me a headache. When I read it, sometimes more than once, I actually have to sound it out loud so as to understand the point.  If there even is a point.  Sometimes it's just one long run on sentence that makes absolutely no sense.  It exhausts me. Who can understand it?

Don't get me wrong, every generation has its slang or lingo. Throughout the years, there have been various adjectives to describe things that were cool, groovy, totally rad, etc.  Why should this generation be any different?

Maybe because the previous generations didn't have computers, cell phones, or ipads.  There were pay phones and manual typewriters. Then came the new and exciting technology of electric typewriters!  We learned to read, write and spell.  There was no such thing as ebonics. We could identify the structure of a sentence, dissecting it down to nouns, adjectives and verbs.  What is a preposition or a dangling participle?  Now that the world relies on a keyboard for almost everything, schools are slowly phasing out cursive writing. Think about the long term effects of that.  Will the next generation be able to sign their name?

I have also spent way too much time reading the Facebook pages of thugs and gangstas.  I regret that I hadn't used those hours of my life doing more productive things. That particular means of communication jumps from basic text abbreviations, to profanity laced, racist insults, threats, and then downright misguided loyalties.  On one particular Facebook page, Nicholas Lindsey, a 16 year old who shot and killed a FL police officer, there's a fan club that practically wants to bestow him with sainthood.  At least that's what I'm deciphering through the pathetic excuse for a language.  But heaven forbid a white guy, cop or otherwise, shoot and kill a black guy.  Then it's racist and the brotha didn't deserve it.  No matter what kind of gangsta, loser, drug dealing, thief that they are, the criminally convicted, drug using, gun wielding, thug was innocent of any wrong doing.

I started reading another blog, Da Real Nick Lindsey and the author goes to great lengths to ferret out and expose these hooligans before the news media glamorizes them.  The writer is succinct, edgy, and turns over rocks looking for facts, getting much of it from Facebook.  Which, by the way, seems to have no secrets.  These people are proud of their criminal backgrounds and illegal activities.  They wear these triumphs like a badge of honor.  But trying to decipher their conversations is a whole different story.  The Chinese language is easier. No wait, I could be insulting the Chinese.

Pretty soon it won't be the English language anymore.  It'll be some Spanglishtext that they'll probably be forced to teach in school...all in the name of political correctness.