I couldn’t believe that i could actually understand what i was reading. The phenomenal power of the human mind, according to a researcher at Cambridge University, is that is doesn’t matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and the last letter be in the right place..

I just did hahah thats well cool…….

I did!

Only kidding. I just mailed that to all my mates, that how good it is.

You know I think the English language is gradually being fazed out. I read a few months ago loads of GCSE students around the country risk failing their English exam cos they wrote their answers in txt language.

2 b or nt 2 b – Shakespear would have been horrified!

Words like Homer’s ‘doh!’ have also made it into the dictionary.

And now there’s a geeky computer language.

Next!

Stephen Fwy was on Jonathon Woss wecently.

I liked his view on language. He embraces all the new words created- slang, txt spk etc. Because he says that IS language and people who run on about correct spellings etc are not truely lovers of language itself. Language changes and morphs and most words we use now are adapted from others.

‘Book’ was a word he mentioned that now has a new meaning. Apparently a lot of kids who use the T9 prog for predictive text messaging keep ‘book’ in place to mean cool, rather than progress to the next word in the dictionary, because it saves time. But now the kids actually say ‘book’ to mean cool in spoken language. Class!

I started the rave slang thread a few months back so I agree with a lot of what the old card-fraudster and runaway (Fry, not BioTech!) says about additions to the language….

The re-use of “book” is amusing; although its origin does imply laziness (I never use that t9 function as it always seems to garble any message I try to send!)

OTOH if it actually ended up with books becoming cool that would be even better (TBH I think its the sheer amount of exams and tests that perhaps understandably put kids off reading nowadays!)

On this note “A Clockwork Orange” is written entirely in an imagined “yoof dialect” of in the 1990s (and takes a while to get into because of this)

Ironically I just read today that revision tips were being issued in txt-slang (presumably so kids can download them to mobile devices, which sort of makes sense as this is the one thing kids today probably will take notice off even if they don’t give a monkeys about anything else at school…)

shurely shome mishtake?

The only letter I would suggest in this situation would be writing an official complaint to the Education Department – it seems completely abhorrent to me that they are expecting someone from the voluntary sector to deliver a basic education service in a British secondary school. Last time I checked you were in SW England, not Bosnia – or have the local chavs torched much of the place and scared off all the real teachers?

how are these kids supposed to write real job applications if they don’t already know how to write business letters?

Where I work (public sector) we have terrible problems with new staff intake who think that its OK to send a formal e-mail using street slang or txt-speak [i.e one with business-critical data as opposed to a friendly message organising after-work drinks, or a private one between office colleagues of the same age]. My employers insist on a minimum 5 gcses including English Language, and they actually check up on certificates and ring schools etc to confirm their authenticity (when I joined them they even checked up on a 1987 O Level pass!) but the standard here has clearly slipped over the years….

If this is how Britain is going (to hell in a handbasket at a very large rate of knots) , I’d suggest you move to Sweden when your daughter reaches school age!

At least she will get a decent education there (the youth of Sweden seem amazingly brainy, from what I have seen of them on the net they seem to spend a lot of their time writing all sorts of useful open-source computer software etc or doing something constructive/creative)

which one is better though?….

The Swedes (and other European nations with similar cultures) still seem to show a lot more skills in engineering/technology etc compared with British youths and a genuine desire and interest in creating and learning at the same time

A couple of Swedish lads wrote an entire freeware PC music roduction programme 10 years ago when the multimedia boom first started)

In wider Europe (including ex-Soviet new entrants) there generally seems to be more interest in technology and engineering amongst young people, and even less of a gender gap (for instance a young lady from East Europe does all the sound engineering for one of our local crews, the blokes in that crew leave her to it and just cart around the speakers!)

but I don’t think British youths are more stupid, perhaps its more a case that starting school so early and so many tests/exams destroy the desire of learning something new for enjoyment.

In my case the stress of exams in my teenage years did (for some time) destroy my interest in both science and arts, and yes, I did turn to various forms of dysfunctional behaviour as a reprisal.

Even today I have a hatred of academic institutions and their formalities.

I think the “dumbing down” is also another form of class manipulation; certain forms of media deliberately champion it in order to create an easily manipulated “lower class”.

Cambridge University research may show letter transpositions do not inhibit the reading of a message, but I’m sure any graduate student writing a paper with incorrect spelling and grammar would be warned to correct it by their tutor!

IMO Posh, Becks and other celebrities are deliberately kept “stupid” (as are many commercial pop stars and personalities, particularly “entry level” presenters on “youth media”) because that way they are less demanding and do not notice how they are in fact a disposable commodity with a limited shelf life, being manipulated by those who own them; the accountants and managers who feel nothing but contempt for them and are quietly sapping their financial and emotional reserves, squeezing them dry and eventually breaking them with “one celebrity scandal too many” when they start getting a bit too uppity…

Those who are in charge of the companies producing reality TV, yoof TV, chavmags and ladmags are nearly all graduates (many from Oxbridge) with a prep/public school secondary education….

We don’t all need to become Oxbridge dons (I only have post 16 education to A-level standard and contrary to popular belief do not even have a first degree!) but “dumbing down” is a very dangerous thing particularly for those who are in alternative communities or live alternative lifestyle.

They are up against opponents with extremely high standards of education and the skills to use their knowledge and intelligence to defeat their adversaries and destroy their networks, often even without the ultimate use of force…