I'm Sorry, What?

It never ceases to amaze how people butcher the English language. More and more, proper grammar usage seems to be a fading art. In my opinion, one of the biggest blemishes on our language was the advent of 'texting'. I am sure that there are texting proponents who would argue that the word simplifications used are a form of language. I, however, view them as the further dumbing down of America. Here is a definition that I found online:

"SMS language or Textese (also known as txtese, chatspeak, txt, textspeak, txtspk, txtk, texting language, or txt talk) is a term for the abbreviations and slang used in text messaging."

Am I guilty of using txtese myself? Yes, I admit it, but on a very limited level. Other than some of the usual suspects like lol, lmao, and brb, I don't use it. I will add that when I do use it, it is always as part of long form communication such as an e-mail. Not only does it seem a lazy form of communication, it fosters non-social behavior. Whatever happened to people engaging in nice healthy conversations? We do have a vocal language people! It has been serving us well for a looooooooong time.

Several months ago, I was out on an errand. I had the radio in the truck tuned to NPR. The host was interviewing a gentleman who was talking about words. He talked about how we English speaking people only use a limited number of words out of the vast array we have at our disposal. He also mentioned that hundreds of words get dropped from the English language yearly. Perfectly good words that have fallen into disuse. Salient words stricken from our dictionary's to be replaced by 'slangy' throwaways like 'chillax'. Absolutely criminal!

Those responsible for the Oxford Dictionary agree. www.savethewords.org is a web site they started to do just that. Their goal is to get people to "adopt" a word. To commit to doing their part in resurrecting one of the forgotten. If you care about the English language, I urge you to adopt one of your own.

My first word is: keleusmatically ~ in an demanding manner