Grammar & Spelling - Is it important? Read post first

[devonin]

I'm always amused to see the argument regarding the evolution of language come up, because it always has false dilemma written all over it.

Generally you'll see something like this: "Languages evolve and change, we can see that by looking at the history of english. Internet-style slang is becoming more prevalent, so we have to -choose- between "Letting the language evolve" or "Resisting the evolution""

The attitude that kind of thought process shows is one that says there can only be one path of linguistic evolution, and so we either have to go with it, or discard it staying where we are, and doesn't allow for the fact that multiple changes can happen in tandem, and we can accept some and reject others.

People coin phrases all the time, some catch on, some don't catch on. This is just the normal course of any evolutionary process. Unfortunately, one of the changes seeing widespread use is the discarding of existing rules primarily of spelling and grammar, in favour of textually efficient speech. The -quicker- you can communicate, the better.

In its own way, internet slang is actually fairly similar to things like older forms of Hebrew, where while still leaving enough letters to decode the meaning, you've done away with vowels entirely, shortening words considerably. Just...unlike hebrew, they haven't also included the use of things like vowel marks to facilitate pronunciation.

Half the reason English is such a complex language to learn is that we've done away with a number of the guiding grammatical and linguistic concepts that other languages have, which make mastery of the language more forumlaic and studied. So in its own way, English is actually a sort of text-speak version of the romance languages.