Yes, you read that right. Vowels are now They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Or so I am given to understand, by most of the text messages I receive. No matter what age group the sender belongs to, nobody seems to be using vowels anymore.
I can understand people who are totally preoccupied with their online identity doing this. They simply have got no time to waste on typing vowels. They have at least ten social media accounts to maintain simultaneously. Posts of their own to edit and upload, that of others to check, follow, like and 'heart'; several selfies to edit, 'filter', touch up and enhance to an extent that would shock somebody who meets them in person for the first time as they would look nothing like their picture; many comments to write and numerous things to scrutinize and find politically incorrect.
If they start focusing on proper spelling, they might not be left with any time to spare on other trivia like sleep, a disciplined routine or, God forbid, a few moments of complete idleness and silence.
But I am surprised and amused at other people following suit. Like those of us who were around in the 80s and knew life before everything became digital, or those belonging to our parents' time. Haven't we grown up with the beauty of fully formed words and complete, grammatically correct sentences? Are we worried about being perceived as too ancient if we wrote properly? Or are we finding everything moving, growing and changing at a dizzying pace that we are desperately scrambling to shorten things wherever possible in order to catch up? What could be the reasonable explanation for us to start dropping the poor Messrs. A, E, I, O and U?
I feel sorry especially for sad 'E', who once enjoyed being the most commonly occurring letter in the language, now in danger of extinction. The others, at least, have a chance. Human egoism will ensure the survival of 'I'. 'U' will enjoy frequent usage as a substitute for 'you'. 'A' will manage to sneak its way into sentences, and everything being always rushed, everybody being always in a hurry will make 'A' confident of the term 'ASAP' never getting old. 'O' has the guarantee of 'LOL' and 'OMG'. But what about our old Mr. E, who has lost the last shred of hope in the word 'e-mail', now that there is no other commonly used form of letter writing and 'mail' has automatically come to mean the electronic one?
Maybe future humans will not even have the necessity to learn spelling. They will be surrounded by Autocorrects and AI to ensure that they can be as lazy as they like, never having to do anything they are not in the mood for. Maybe they will be shown pieces of text written on paper in whole sentences and lengthy words during museum tours, like we are shown clay tablets, birch barks or papyruses. And they will wonder how we ancient humans belonging to the "slow" era ever had the time to sit and spell out every word.
But I sincerely hope it doesn't happen anytime soon. I still love long messages. When I get a 'sry' from someone, I long to tell them that the fact that there are missing letters is harder for me to forgive than what they are actually apologizing for. Or when they send a 'thx' my way, I long to let them know that I am willing to help them in any way I can, if they will only annex 'anks' in place of the 'x' in exchange.
thrws my nxt rtcl wll b wrttn n ths wy nd s wll ll th txt mssgs I snd n rspns.
****
PS
Okay, I cannot do this. That was:
'Otherwise my next article will be written in this way and so will all the text messages I send in response.'
Phew!
****
Listen to this article here: