Shrinking Language

    I don't know about other countries, but here in America our English language and vocabulary are slowly shrinking. By some counts English has the most words of any language, I can learn a new word everyday for the rest of my life and still not know all of them. Society has undergone an incredible transformation over the past 30 years or so. We now live in the digital age where people don't talk or write anymore, instead choosing to communicate with e-mails, text messages, and social media. We are so dependant on technology that our grade schools have started to phase out penmanship. Writing cursive used to be a requirement in schools, now the young generations just abbreviate everything. I don't know if anyone 30 years ago could have predicted that we would ever start communicating with sounds and letters instead of words. This has no doubt grown out of a culture of impatience. Anyone born after 1980 has not had to wait for anything. Computers, microwaves and cable t.v gave us quick access to the world. So fast that society has now become unable to wait for anything. We can't wait in line at the store or at a red light without getting frustrated and bored. This is shown in our digital communications, we no longer take the time to type full words much less sentences. We now use slang words and acronyms as often as we can. The acronyms are funny to me because some of the letters take just as long to say as the words themselves. For example, OMG stands for "Oh My God", and BRB stands for "Be Right Back", letters may be faster to type but not always faster to say. Notice that both phrases uses the same amount of syllables as their letter counter part. Our language seems to be getting condensed to save time and space, leaving me with questions. Are we being efficient or lazy? Where does it end? Are we unlearning English? Reading is one of the best activities you can do for your brain, hopefully we will at least continue to embrace a standard in books and magazines. I cant imagine reading a novel that replaced "I love you" with "luv u" how long before these abbreviations end up commonplace in books and magazines? At this rate we will be left with only the alphabet again, then it won't be long before we are back to using primitive grunts and ticks to communicate. - BDB (Google Images)