Bak Ta Scwl

Excuse me?

If social media has taught me anything, its that most people cant spell for toffee. Or toucans. Or is that parrots? At least they try. Now being a fair man I didn't jump immediately to this assumption. 'Perhaps they were being plain lazy' I thought, but alas after reading some of the things being typed, I have no choice but admit that it is in fact stupidity at work. Bless their 99p Poundland cotton socks. The combination of ignorance and text messaging was too potent.
"Hey lwk, I did na go ta scwl!" They might as well post on Facebook to their just as silly friends, babbling away like a tree house full of baboons at a jumble sale. (Nothing against jumble sales, simpy using it to paint a picture.)
And you want to know something? It kills me man, like watching a leprous toad mate with a swan, or a bungling art curator spill Tipp Ex on Van Gogh's Starry Nights.
Part blame must go to odious tabloid newsrags. For instance in recent gossip an actors name was spelled thus:

The Telegraph ~ Robert Pattinson. The Sun ~ R Patz

Is it any wonder spelling and grammar have turned to sh!t when the most popular scandal rags are slapping this abomination of english all over the headlines? So what does this make Dai Jakes? Dazza Ja? D Jakz? God's teeth, its the perfect bastard made flesh. Nothing short of the murder of language and I for one am all for swinging the illiterate swines from the nearest gallows. Its not thunder you can hear dear reader, its Milton and Coleridge turning in their graves.
People are daft aplenty without the red tops gleefully encouraging gibberish. The actors name is Robert Pattinson, not 'R Patz'! Desist this foul caper! Stop telling folk its okay to be a lazy ass! Or suffer to be the smoking gun at the scene of a bloody crime. Do we really wish to be speaking a tongue that giants of literature like George Orwell would think alien? As a lover of languages (and speaker of three) it kills me to see such wilful sabotage.
Those Ecard things have become quite popular so Mr Jakes has created one of his own.

Reversal of Civilization

Dai Jakes has written about this before but its important to revisit the subect before all hope is lost forever under the burning carcass that used to be a language. We live in an age of super quick messaging where Facebook, Twitter et al rule supreme. It would seem that proper use of grammar and spelling has proven to be too time consuming for modern communication. The beautiful language of Milton and Shakespeare long forgotten, replaced with the ever foul 'text speak', or as I prefer to call it, gibberish.
Welcome to the Reversal of Civilization! The decline in written and spoken language will be one of the most influential factors into our decline and I shall in time be proven correct. And if this blog survives 100 years or so I would like to point out to future readers that the rot of language didn't go entirely unnoticed. Mr Jakes saw it coming years ago.
Should more have been done to preserve it? Maybe but you see the majority were too busy learning new 'words' like scwl (school), prolly (probably), LOL (laughs out loud) and lwk (look). Dear God they even look vulgar! But alas what the majority want, is what they will eventually get so we are stuck with it. Stuck with the 'accomplishment' of having murdered a language so beautifully used by Keats and Byron.
Those who have had their minds rotted by celebrity and television will not care but there are few of us who think it terribly sad and a disgrace.

Word Salad

In this day of text messages and Twitter, does the ability to spell and use good grammar count for anything? Did you know pupils are NOT marked down for incorrect spelling and grammar in english language exams? (Next year they will be im told). Who on earth would be in favour of bad spelling/grammar? I realise we all make mistakes and everything I throw on this screen will not always be word perfect but I do try. This 'text speak' annoys me quite a bit (probably more than it ought to) and I tend to ignore it when I see it.
If someone were to send me an email full of 'grt, scwl, lyk, lol' it would get instantly deleted because more than anything it tells me the author is lazy and unimaginative and I don't have time for those types im afraid.
Yes the way we speak/write does change and evolve over the years, for instance Shakespeare wrote differently from the way we do now but this whole buisness of shortening words is a very poor show. In a word it is shabby. And where does it end? There has to be a certain degree of discipline or else the language will descend into drivel with people spelling however they feel like on a particular day.
Personally I look at those who use 'text speak' in a similar way I look at cheap clothes, and I don't care how snooty that makes me look. At least im being honest.