Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Kabali's Language Conservation Programme...

As a language, English has contributed a lot to the people of this planet. And as creatures who can think, people have contributed equally to the language in return. In the first place, the offer from the language was a medium for us to communicate. Once the language was completely formalized and spread to almost all corners of the world, people started jumping from 'Need to communicate' to 'Easy to communicate'. Circa 1992, a group of people met on the very objective of simplifying the language. And simplifying invariably meant shortening the words. Or in other words, screwing the language. They arrived at a chart similar to the periodic elements table found in a chemistry text book, listing all those alphabets which with their phonetics pertain to a word. For e.g., 'c' can be used in lieu of 'see' or 'y' in lieu of 'why', ‘s’ in lieu of ‘yes’, 'b' in lieu of 'be' and hundreds of different such combos.


Fortunately or unfortunately, voluntarily or involuntarily, most of us belong to the consortium established back then. But just that some of us have not completely soaked ourselves in it, while the rest are totally imbibed where I see no chance of retrieval. And this 'shortened' English became widely popular with the advent of mobile phone SMS and web-messenger-chats. People could no longer talk using normal words let alone writing. One would say 'wassup?' instead of 'what’s up?' which was already coined instead of ‘What is up?". Similarly, 'Lemme do dis' or 'Gimme dat' instead of 'Let me do this' or 'Give me that'. And coming to the worst part, some people use the word 'ma' instead of 'my'. That's the crappiest. They would say/write 'ma friend' instead of 'my friend'. While using such 'shortened' words, one truly wonders how much time such Einsteins save. And that too there is not even a shortening. Just a spelling change. Ridiculous, is what one can say, laughing at such idiocy. Maybe they think its making them cool or something. For those of you, who have the habit of using such stupid replacements, please be informed that it’s no more than a torment to read.


I'm sure there will be some 'ultra-intelligent-souls' who might come back and argue that language is used for communication and who cares as to how the words are spelt. Very smart. But then, before using such English, that too in public medium, please make sure the reader/recipient is comfortable deciphering such super-smart-code words. And one of my colleagues so used to this kind of writing, while drafting an official e-mail to the customer includes a sentence which said something like 'I wud b done wid dis tsk in 3 hrs. U ok wid dat?' I was copied in that e-mail. If I were the customer, I'd have simply replied saying 'Please resend this e-mail in English. I don't know Tulu and such languages'. I see many such instances in blog posts too. And I get totally busted by the time I complete reading most of such posts/comments. Maybe the attempt is to ease up the writer's work, but many a time, it leaves a bemused reader behind. And such usage of language, as common as it gets in today's world might totally change the written language one day. Who knows? We might end up with just 17 or 18 alphabets because of those ‘super-lazy-smart-brains’.


So, unable to bear the smear on the language, Kabali proposes a 'Language conservation Programme'. People who belong to this group and who respect this group shall try to communicate in one pure language - be it English or Tamil or whatever. On and off, it's ok for people to jump to other languages for effective communication (after all communication is the goal!), but they are definitely not encouraged to coin their own words and form a new language, whatsoever. Abbreviations such as 'lol' or 'rotfl' are fine, as long as one does not think of doing a whole communication with just such abbreviations. Kabali also considers everyone who has read this post a part of the programme, thereby mandating folks to abide by the rules. If somebody is found violating any of the aforementioned rules, they'd be sentenced to severe punishments as per Kabali's federal law. 


Don’t dare! And now join me in saving the language!

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

iO iO

enaku bayamma iruku.. :O

Priya Iyer said...

:)) enjyed readng dis...

Gayatri said...

Oru mudivoda thaan irukiya nee? :P yaar kaiyaala adi vaanga poriyo therila!

SK said...

I am with you!!
heights is b4 for before!!!! tooooo much.

dat and dis is the lang of the kallus the cool people want to ape.

y, for why!

Btw, what's for what is is legal! May be its jsut a matter of time when these variations become legal!!

I am sure you would have read the joke about how english tries to swallow letters..?! Its quite funny.

rantravereflect/ jane said...

That was positively hilarious!!

I'm very particular about spellings and grammar when i write my posts, and when I write mails to customers/ reporting mails to my bosses..
However, when I'm doing a lighter writng service, like while smsing or chatting with someone online, let's just say lol n rotfl are not teh only abbreviations i use :)

I guess it's all about compartmentalisation- be a roman in rome!
WHEN YOU GOT TO BE GOOD, BE GOOD, wen ya gocha b bad, b bad ;)

m said...

Ithu enna ippadi oru kedu pidi! I thought u wanted to become a democratic politician not a dictator!

Arun Sundar said...

Victorious,
io'va? Tell 'Aiyyo'.

Priya,
Thanks.

Gayatri,
Kabali mela kai vechaa, tamilnaadey sthambichu poidum.

SK,
S. B4 is 2 much. Sigh! And I haven't read the joke. Google doesn't help either.

Rantravereflect,
Agreed. 110%.

Ela,
All arasiyal'la saadhaaranam. Kabali rules in his own style.

N.V.Prashanth said...

Kabali...One who has kudumi can alli mudinjify...Grammar theriyaadhavana enna panradhu? Mannichi vitrungha!

-=A.R.N.=- said...

Well I guess for a large part, SMS has to be blamed for this as well.
And seriously, the "ma" totally ticks me off too.
But "what is up?"....dude, that sounds straight out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon :D

Slogger said...

lol

Arun Sundar said...

Prashanth,
Grammar therila'na wogay baa...Aana, sila paer ellaaam therinjum language'a spoil panraanga. Appo dhaan Kabali blood boiling.

Rahman,
'What's up?' is fine. I dint mean any change. In fact, I'd have used such words many a time in this post myself.

Slogger,
Yaa..lol is fine ;)

Preeti said...

*Fingers trembling, intense fear*

(I'm being extra careful while typing this out..ahem)

Change is the only constant thing in the world, Kabali anna...Everything has gotta change.. :P I would agree that this stuff is highly irritating when it is in the form of 'literature'...as in when i write, i deifnitely wouldn't use toooo many of those short forms (i do use 'cuz' and 'gotta' sometimes...not cuz its a short form, but 'cuz' it conveys colloquialism and casual-ism) And im glad i have the discretion 'cuz' i'm an sms- addict :D And i can pretty much draw the line and keep jumping boundaries when required...

But yea, 'ma' is UNBEARABLE...iv told off a lotta (:D) people who message that...adu chumma vethu scene...oru accent mannum illa! :D

N.V.Prashanth said...

Why ora vanjanai on "ma"????

Arun Sundar said...

Preeti,
Change is the only thing that's constant. Agreed. But not to the language when used in public medium. And what made you imagine that this post is aimed at you? :)

Prashanth,
The very usage sucks big time. Illayo?!

Sabz said...

Vadlivelu oru padathulla solluvar "Evanukku ellam kadavul theriyalayo avan pondatti ellam pathini ellai-nu" like that u have told " 'ultra-intelligent-souls' who might come back and argue ...." after this who will come and fight for it......ethulla extra prosecution terms vera....Jesus Christ ….

Preeti said...

I never said u targeted me, but i know that i do use these short forms, so as a perpetrator, i spoke up...im like that...konjam enthu aana konjam extra va pesuven....but that doesnt necessarily signify (tho at times yes) bein guilty :D hehe!

SuperMus said...

Tried using this language to annoy a friend today... And it completely worked!! Your post was the inspiration, so thank you!