RC India

Ernest Hemingway was one of the first advocates of this issue and had threatened to banish the alphabet 'K' as it served no blessed purpose. After all, nock / nife / nee / nack and nickers can all be articulated and comprehended without that surplus consonant. It is no wonder that Mr. Hemingway hasn't written much about Kenya, Kangaroos or Kishore Kumar.

Years ago, while conducting workshops on Improving Communication Skills, I used to cite an example that served to exhibit the linguistic mayhem caused by the use of abbreviated words in written communication. This was before the advent of cellphones. I am amazed at the similarity between that old example and 'sms language' in use today. It is almost as if a prophecy had come true. Read for yourself and decide (remember that this only a jocular / fictitious example and has no truth behind it - it is also not associated with Daimler Chrysler in any way).


The new Daimler-Chrysler company has reached an agreement to adopt English as the preferred language for all corporate communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, former Chrysler chairman Robert Eaton conceded that English spelling has some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan to coincide with the merging of the companies.
In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replased with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replased by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 persent shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Exekutives will enkorage the removal of double leters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e" s in the languaj is disgrasful, and they would go.
By the forth yer, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by "v".
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be droped from words kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sesibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understant ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali av kum tru.

I need to add something here. 15 years ago, upon reading this example off the screen, the participants of my workshops would be in splits. They found the example rather apt. Lately, I notice that enthusiasm to be waning. Either I am losing my touch as a Trainer, or this neo English language is actually becoming more and more comprehensible and acceptable................

The later is very much the case.

Flip side to this, when i was in eigth grade, my english teacher passed this hand out around, we were in splits, now whenever i show this, children ask me what is 'Donkey Hote'. so VC, that is to prove times have changed, probably for good, as long as you make sense to all, it is ok i guess, therefore the ban on SMS language which is greek and latin to the oldies. Here read on

1. Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics.They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.
 
2. The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible,Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children,Cain, asked, “Am I my brother’s son?”
 
3. Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada.
 
4. Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.
 
5. The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth.
 
6. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.
 
7. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.
 
8. In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java.
 
9. Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long.
 
10. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: “Tee hee, Brutus.”
 
11. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
 
12. Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was cannonized by Bernard Shaw. Finally Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offense.
 
13. In midevil times most people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature.
 
14. Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son’s head.
 
15. Queen Elizabeth was the “Virgin Queen.” As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted “hurrah.”
 
16. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.
17. The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies,comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Romeo’s last wish was to be laid by Juliet.
 
18. Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.
 
19. During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe.
 
20. Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was called Pilgrim’s Progress. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.
 
21. One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. Finally the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, “A horse divided against itself cannot stand.”. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
 
22. Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.
 
23. Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest Precedent. Lincoln’s mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth’s career.
 
24. Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy.
 
25. Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.
 
26. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German half Italian and half English. He was very large.
 
27. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.
 
28. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened and catapulted into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn’t have any children.
 
29. The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is In the East and the sun sets in the West.
 
30. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practiced virtue. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.
 
31. The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of river to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men.
 
32. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.
 
33. The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an anahist, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.
 
 

This is for those who wonder why we don't advocate the use of 'SMS language'...

Anything you write on the internet will stay for quite a long time. Whatever you write should be comprehensible to all people who read what you have written. Yes, 'SMS language' might reduce effort and save those fingers of yours, the agony of typing that one extra letter, but what you have written will be quite hard to comprehend. So please do yourself and all of us a favour and use proper 'English'.

A few grammatical errors might be accepted since English is not everyone's first language but please, try to make your posts readable.

@VC: I'm going to copy that example and keep it with me...

@Augustinev(Yeah, I'm used to your old username) You've got some funny stuff going on there....

@rcpilotacro

priceless collection... worth preserving :D :D :D

rcpilotacro - This a true collectors item! Sadly, I wonder how many of the current generation will be able to comprehend and appreciate it.

My stomach/jaws have started to pain :)

Gusty, :)
Hats off to you.  :hatsoff: And VC, imho  8-) (u c, I also have lernd some sms-ese. lol !!! rofl.),  the  day not far off when the    sms-ese devps diffntly frm or'nery English, as an independent jargon. :banghead:
Pardon me if my usage of the sms-ese is not understood. :giggle:
essaargee. ??? >:(

i dun unstnd wht u try 2 say :giggle:


YIKES!!! I did that. Sacrilege!!!  :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

essaargee - Begging your pardon, Old Chap, that linguistic travesty shan't be repeated in the near future.

Aaaaaaah, that feels much better. :rofl:

oh my God..  Seniors.. million salutes.. :salute: :salute: :salute:

I was trying to say that I too don't like the indiscriminate use of the sms english. But one has to learn a little of this lingo whether one likes it or not, especially when one interacts with the younger 'neo-english' users.  :headscratch: Its inevitable. The grammar also is on the way out through the window, even in the old timers. :(

doc,
absolutely, then single malt is single malt, you see what i mean.. :)