I know that English is not my native tongue and I cannot claim to speak it well. Nevertheless, I love the language and it is the only one I can articulate myself properly in. I believe that all languages should be spoken correctly, so the sentiment I’m about to share here is not exclusive to English. In fact, I get really annoyed when I watch the NTA (Nigeria Television Authority) news and hear newscasters, in an attempt to do fone*, anglicizing Nigerian words. Absolute tomfoolery it is!
I read yesterday that the Collins’ scrabble dictionary had been updated to include words like “innit”, “aloo”, etc. I’m all for the acknowledgement of slang but when words like these are validated for use in the scrabble dictionary, it spells the beginning of the end. I think that English as it is meant to be spoken, Received Pronunciation/the Queen’s English, is beautiful. I remember listening to an episode of Spooks because I was too lazy to look at the screen and falling in love with the actor who was playing the head of MI6. He spoke with a cut glass accent. I looked at the screen eventually because I needed a face for my crush and sadly he turned out to be an old, bald gentleman. If I were blind though, I would have happily married him on account of his beautiful diction. Conversely, I have totally lost interest in men once they revealed a less than adequate grasp of the language**.
I am a massive fan of mobile phones, particularly smart ones, and cannot remember how life used to be without one. My one issue with them though is the corrosive influence of text-speak. These days I am at a loss to explain whether the messages I receive are from people with a limited command of English, people who think they are too cool for school or, worse still, just too damn lazy to type. I receive messages that practically require a cryptographer to decipher because of numerous grammatical and spelling liberties having been taken.
I had a recent interaction with a teenage cousin of mine using Facebook chat. Despite my near uncontrollable urge to highlight the lack of punctuation, capitalisation and pointless abbreviations, I carried on chatting with him without making any corrections until I saw the word “yhu”. The following conversation ensued:
Me: J, there is something I’ve just seen that is threatening to kill or, at the very least, blind me. Why are you writing “yhu”?
J: It’s supposed to be “you”
Me: So what purpose does writing it “yhu” serve? It is neither shortening the word nor reducing the energy/time required to type out “you”
J: Well doesn’t it just annoy you when you try to write “you” and it comes up “yuo” instead? I just make less mistakes writing “yhu”
Me: Last time I checked, you weren’t a typist paid by how many words you type per minute so I can’t understand how much of a rush you could be in to demand such a travesty.
Some of the irritating examples are:
- Confusion of plurals with possessives – even my iPhone autocorrect function causes me unending grief by substituting “friend’s” for “friends” or “friends’” EVERY SINGLE TIME. How anyone can confuse this is beyond me yet it’s in every single document I have read at work so far this week!
- Deliberate omission of the apostrophe e.g. “Ive” which I think has led to use of “Am” in place of “I’m” and “your” instead of “you’re”
- Senseless abbreviation e.g. “srzly” instead of “seriously” (I mean I just about force myself to ignore "U” and “gr8” because I can understand the time saving use of them but these other things drive me up the wall)
- Senseless spelling e.g. “mi” instead of “me” or “tlk” instead of “talk” – come on, how difficult can it be to type that one extra letter?
If it were up to me, mobile providers would charge more for meaningless messages and Facebook (as well as all other forms of social media) would prevent people from posting nonsensical words but then we don’t live in my dictatorship. LOL
In more positive news, I learnt a bunch of stuff this week that I didn’t even know I wanted to learn. I now know that a piece of wood/metal that separate panes of a sash window is called “muntin” and the white semi-circular marking at the base of your finger nail is called a “lunule”. One I always wanted to know was what the tips of a shoelace might be called – turns out it’s an “aglet”.
*A way of speaking that eliminates the typical influences of Nigerian dialects and thus perceived to be posh
** Limited to Nigerians and other Anglophone people
