OMG! WTF!....is happening to the English Language?!

Well, how is this happening.  

Conspiracy theories aside, i’d say that one of the significant contributors to the degeneration of language, and hence, thought, is the young serving as a significant and vocal market force, and playing a major role in the evolution of the content of the net, with it largely being determined by the Americans whom are advanced enough in capitalism to reduce and produce people whom are nothing more than mere consumers and trend-followers.

Is it any wonder that ‘awesome’ and ‘weird’ and ‘cool’ have become the verbal arbitrators of what is acceptable and what isn’t?  There is no argument, no rationale.  All we are assailed by is a barrage of OMGs and WTFs and LOLs. 

Like I was saying to my companion, V (chinese girl from singapore) is that the more extensive the vocabulary, the greater the meaningful means by which we can comprehend reality.  I compared american-english to the chinese-english (for instance, called ‘singlish’, in singapore) that is spoken in s.e.Asia to the language of children.  It has minimal vocabulary, and grammatical rules are thrown aside in favour of communicating quickly, and 'understanding' things by paying attention to that which is the most obvious in phenomena.  

It reinforces the minimal appreciation of the many facets of reality for the convenience of making sense of it as quickly as possible.  It is a contradiction of course, as it basically means that one ignores all information that requires further thought.  In other words, in order to understand things quickly, we pay attention to less things.  Like i’ve said to some, if the great thinkers of the past thought in OMGs and WTFs, you wouldn’t have all the amenities of modern civilisation that you now enjoy. 

When it comes to language, paying attention to pronunciation for instance, makes us more aware of detail in general.  Using more interchangeable words or various perspectives to describe our feelings - instead of just ‘awesome’ vs. ‘weird’ - can reinforce our tendency to appreciate that there is more than one way to appreciate a situation.  Going beyond the usage of ‘awesome’ and ‘weird’ to argue for or against a value of a phenomenon clarifies our own feelings towards something, opens ourselves to being contradicted and hence refining our views. 

All of these are excluded in the language of today.  All contradiction is dismissed with a childish and petulant ‘whatever’.  Textspeak, abbreviations, and acronyms, comprise the Newspeak of today.  We do not need some ‘Ministry of Truth’ crossing out words in a dictionary to achieve this.  All we need is a reduction of people to mere consumers and workers (via capitalism), and handing the evolution of civilisation over to the young to achieve this.  With the passage of time they may age, but not mature.  And thereafter, the difference between old and young becomes just a matter of subtraction and addition of numbers, as opposed to wisdom and ignorance.

English is fast becoming the 'Newspeak' reminiscent of Orwell's 1984. The lesser the words, the lesser the understanding. The juveniles who mass-populate the net are determining the evolution of the 'adult' of tomorrow. OMG! WTF! ~ ed

1984, audiobook
read online: george-orwell.org/1984

buy from Amazon: 1984


ed