Submitted by Victoria McMagnus on Wed, 07/02/2008 - 20:57.
Earth calling Great Britain: You're no longer great and you're about to become un-Britified. A growing number of uneducated peasants are taking over the political arena and the cultural institutions. Now they've hijacked the English language, seriously proposing to dumb it down by spelling all words phonetically. I guess the American ghetto vocabulary ("dawg," "hoe," "gangsta") wasn't enough of a simplification to make yourself understandable. Together with Portugal we're now closing in on our Third World friends in Brazil. No need for messy translations anymore, since every citizen of the World Empire (c) will be able to say the magical words "I need money" and "I've got hoes in the back, wanna go foh a raaiidh?"
Shakespeare can say goodbye. If the crowd of voters decide to keep Hamlet alive, he'll be making out with Ophelia in comic strips. The dropping intelligence of the people who will consume this junk accounts for a cultural decadence of enormous scope. Another factor to mention here is the poor standard of teaching itself. High levels of illiteracy are a comfort to our slave masters - who would prefer us not to think over things too deeply in case we might object to their tyranny - an unlikely thought, considering that a majority of their voters barely know how to cook their own food or maintain a relationship. At least they will soon be capable of expressing these problems without the worry of misunderstandings.
English spelt phonetically? Can that even be achievable given the various accents from the US (who would love more idiocratic communication - together with Canadians and Australians) to the many regions of Britain? Let's take the pronunciation of the word "hair." In America some would say "hayuh," and in the UK there would be various alternatives like: "err," "air," "hur" and "hir." As a scouser would agree, "Dee do dough, don't dee dough jowameen?." And when the chosen spelling turns out to be other than the Scouse version, "eee thass no'fur!."
Why stop at words? What about math, the ultimate challenge to any idiot. We could let numbers only go up to 10 - which is the number of fingers we have to count on - or possibly 20 for those advanced enough to include their toes. The Church can be called on to support this point, declaring that if God had intended us to have more than 20 digits, he would have made us resemble millipedes. And that would be creepy!
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Language accelerated.
In 1984, the reduction in the level of expression that could be achieved through language was set as a goal in order to restrict the ability of the populous to think. The reasons behind the corruption of modern language in Western nations are likely somewhat different and would appear to me to be four-fold:
1. The adoption of the novelty/exotic expressions and language of migrants from backward nations; a result of the relentless glorification of the underdog in Western societies.
2. Poor educational standards.
3. The demands on individuals to process and convey such high volumes of information within a given time frame, either via email, text, etc, are such that they simply to not have the time for eloquence.
4. The booming numbers of people of low intelligence who are simply incapable of manipulating advanced language to express themselves effectively.
And trivial though it may seem, a fifth initial cause may have been:
5. Text messages are restricted to a certain number of characters and cost money to send, so in order to get the most bang for their buck, kids would aim to fit their message into one text by ripping out anything they could to save space. This appeared to be particularly the case when mobile phones first became widely affordable.
Due to changing phone packages, my suggested fifth reason would appear to be less of a factor now.
Can't help but agree.
It can certainly be put down to a lot of media outlets, particularly the tabloids and publications that pass as 'cultural' these days (of which there are too many to name). It is a heady mixture of the free press and mass gullibility that is to blame.
Initially it was the 'pig latin' (or text messaging) craze that began in the late 1990's with the digital mobile phone coming into the hands of millions (this is now 'billions') of mainly youthful consumers. This has now leaked it's way into the common mindset, even now being used to conduct general conversations (be they face to face or across the internet). You will seldom even find a profile on social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace (and an even more drastic example being Bebo) where any profile information is conducted in the correct grammatical English.
To add to the 1984 comment it makes a lot of sense. People are narrowing down the syllables and phrasings used in their words and sentences just for the sake of easier, more diluted conversation. Most English colloquial speech has lost it's uniqueness in the past two to three generations, now sounding akin to a mixture of the least intelligible nuances of said local dialects and the ghetto slang one would often associate with MTV culture and run-down city areas of North America.
In short, it's saddening.
Nice
It's just like the newspeak from 1984, but the sad part about it is that it was the retards in the 'hood and the 'burbs that gave us this, not just the government (although they arent helping any...)