I'm Pissed Off: Our Language Is Under Attack And We're All Contributing!
If we're not part of the solution, we must be part of the problem...
I’m going to be blunt.
I’m utterly, unequivocally, incandescently pissed off.
Pissed off at the casual butchery of the English language that I witness every day, the erosion of precision, the triumph of sloppiness.
And honestly, it feels like we’re sleepwalking into an intellectual abyss, one dumb text message at a time.
It Wasn’t Always Like This
Remember 2008? The iPhone was barely a year old, and while smartphones existed, they hadn't yet become the ever-present extensions of our limbs they are today.
Social media was still finding its feet, and "WhatsApp" was just a twinkle in Jan Koum and Brian Acton's eyes.
It feels like a lifetime ago, a simpler time when a well-constructed sentence wasn't a rare gem, and a conversation didn't descend into a series of emojis and truncated words.
The advent of cellphones, particularly since that watershed year, has undeniably accelerated this decline.
We went from dialling numbers to tapping out messages, and with each tap, the pressure for brevity intensified.
Then came messaging apps – WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, you name it – that further normalized this truncated communication.
From nowhere, the subtle art of written expression became an unnecessary luxury, a relic of a bygone era.
Don’t Get Me Wrong Here
Listen, I’m not some Luddite railing against progress.
I understand the need for efficiency.
But what began as a “need for speed” has morphed into an outright assault on intelligibility.
Abbreviations like "LOL," "BRB," and "SMH" were once internet shorthand, confined to chat rooms.
Now, they’ve infiltrated everyday communication, often used where a simple, complete sentence would be far more appropriate and less jarring.
We’ve become so accustomed to this linguistic shorthand that a significant portion of the population struggles to formulate a coherent thought without resorting to it - and that’s the scary part.
And let’s not even get started on the rampant misuse of punctuation, the flagrant disregard for basic grammar, and the pervasive "typos" that are often just pure laziness. "Ur" for "your," "there" for "their" or "they’re," "loose" for "lose".
And ffs, talk to me for more than 30 seconds without punctuating every phrase with “like”. Apologies, just seeing if you were paying attention, lol - STOP IT NOW!
Maybe I’m Just Nitpicking, But Maybe Not!
This isn’t just about being pedantic, though I admit to having a stubborn streak when it comes to the beauty and use of language.
This is about being actively dumbed down.
When we consistently encounter poorly constructed sentences, our own capacity for constructing coherent thoughts diminishes.
Our vocabulary shrinks, our ability to articulate complex ideas with precision wanes, and our critical thinking skills, intimately tied to our linguistic abilities, suffer.
I had a stark, infuriating reminder of this a short while ago. I was at a cafe, and the bill came to, let’s call it $25 (I live in South Africa, so it was actually in Rands).
I asked the young waitress, perhaps fresh out of school, if she would add a 10% tip to the bill for herself.
She stared blankly at the bill, then at me, then back at the bill.
After a moment of awkward silence, she sheepishly pulled out her phone and opened the calculator app.
A calculator to work out ten percent! It's basic arithmetic, a skill most of us mastered in primary school. But for her, it was an impossible hurdle without the aid of technology!
This isn't an isolated incident; it's a symptom of a much larger problem.
When even simple mental calculations become impossible, what hope do we have for complex problem-solving, for nuanced debate, for critical analysis?
So, where’s all this heading?
I fear for a future where communication becomes increasingly superficial, where our ability to express and understand complex ideas is severely hampered.
Imagine a world where official documents are riddled with ambiguities and mistakes because no one truly understands the precise meaning of words anymore, or cares to proofread properly.
In fact, this isn’t even the future; it’s happening right now.
Think about the potential for miscommunication in critical fields: medicine, law, and engineering. If we can’t communicate clearly and precisely, the potential for disastrous errors skyrockets.
We need to be careful, incredibly careful.
Language is the bedrock of civilization. It’s how we share knowledge, build consensus, preserve history, and innovate for the future.
When we degrade our language, we degrade our capacity for all these things.
We risk a future where critical thinking is a lost art, where nuance is a foreign concept, and where the ability to articulate a clear, coherent thought becomes a superpower.
The capacity for nuanced thought, after all, is what sets us apart from AI, and we lose this capacity at our peril.
So, the next time you’re about to type “CU l8r,” just pause.
Take a moment…
Consider writing “See you later.” It might take an extra second, but it’s a small step towards reclaiming the beauty, precision, and power of the English language.
I’ll try my best to do the same!
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