Yes, vowels are now They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Or so I am given to understand by most of the text messages I receive. Irrespective of the sender's age group, vowels seem to have become persona non grata.
Now, I understand social media junkies resorting to stripping the flesh off the skeletal consonants. Completely preoccupied with their online identities and having at least ten social media accounts to maintain simultaneously, they simply have no time to waste typing vowels. They have 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 their faces would look nothing like their picture; many seething comments to write and numerous things to scrutinize and find politically incorrect.
I do see that if these lost souls are forced to focus 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:
'U' will enjoy frequent usage as a substitute for 'you'. (How else would we place blame? Vital human functions like 'arguing' and 'bickering' are at stake here. No, we cannot afford to drop Mr. 'U'. Too dangerous even to contemplate.)
'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'. (What else could people be expected to do? Come up with beautiful adjectives everytime they respond to a message?)
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?
It may be that 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.
Perhaps 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, the 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 in their text 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 continue helping them in any way I can, if they would 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!
*****
so so true. Wish the same. Very well said!!
ReplyDeleteYou have such a good insight and your writing is so beautiful. Keep posting such blogs .
ReplyDeleteThank you for your kind words.
DeleteBeautiful. Please keep posting ❤
ReplyDelete😄What an entertaining take on the shortening of words nowadays.. 👀
ReplyDeleteBest to you!!
Writing is amazingly beautiful.
ReplyDeleteKeep posting such articles.
Nice
ReplyDeleteSo true. It drives me mad. I like how you think it a way of controlling when everything is moving at dizzying speed.
ReplyDeleteWell said. Keep posting
ReplyDelete