The virtual linguist

Texting more popular than phoning

Texting is now more popular than phoning from both mobiles and landlines, according to a recent Ofcom report. In 2011, 200 texts on average per month per person were sent, compared to 70 per month in 2006. There are no data regarding usage of Skype and similar programs, but I would imagine that people have not given up entirely talking to one another, and that more people are speaking to each other via their computer, since it is a free service.

 

According to Ofcom, one of the reasons for the increasing popularity of text messaging is the good deals offered by mobile phone networks, many of whom offer free texts, or at least charge less for sending a text than making a phone call. More people are sending messages to friends via Facebook and other social networking sites, and they are using their mobile phone to access these sites.

 

Many people think that the popularity of texting sounds the death knell for grammatical and well-spelt English. I contributed briefly to a short piece on the Ofcom report on Radio Scotland's Newsweek programme yesterday (listen here for a few more days; it was the very last segment on the programme, so comes up about 5 minutes before the end). I don't send or receive anywhere near 200 texts a month, but I can see the value of texting. I used to find it very useful a few years ago when keeping in touch with my children when they were out, as they didn't mind me texting too much as their friends didn't have to know who was texting them or what they were texting me back, whereas a phone call is a bit more public.

 

Before mobile phones really took off, train carriages used to be fairly quiet places with most people sitting reading. Then, with the advent of mobile phones, train journeys were ruined by several mobile phone conversations going on around you simultaneously. Now I find that train carriages are generally quite quiet places again, with most people sitting texting, playing games or doing some other quiet activity that entails staring at their mobile phone screen.

 

The Ofcom report can be accessed here, but be warned - it's hundreds of pages long.

Texting abbreviations

Evan Davis, one of the presenters on Radio 4's Today programme, was pulled up for saying that the text abbreviation LOL meant 'lots of laughs', when it actually stands for 'laughing out loud'. LOL is an abbreviation used in several different ways, according to Fiona Macpherson of the OED, who was interviewed by Evan this morning (available for another week here); some people mean 'lots of love' when they write LOL in a text.

 

The most common texting abbreviation, according to Fiona Macpherson, is probably OMG, or 'Oh, my God!' (not as new as you might think -- it was first used in a letter in 1917). She also went on to say that these days expressions that were coined to save time and characters when tweeting (such as the ruder WTF) are now being used - in their abbreviated form - in speech. Certainly these coined abbreviated terms seem to take on a life of their own. Evan Davis felt quite uncomfortable saying some of the common abbreviated expletives (such as FFS, for f....'s sake) on the radio, even though he was only saying three letters, and probably many listeners would not have understood him anyway.

 

Listen to the short interview here; it will be available for another week.

Emoticons

How old are emoticons? We tend to associate them with texting and emails, but, in fact, emoticons date back to the 19th century (see a facsimile of a newspaper article within this article).

 

The word emoticon is a blend of the two words emotion and icon. Many emoticons, eg the smiley face, transcend language and are understood in most countries. The emoticon :-) was first used in a digital context in 1982 by Scott E Fahlman of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University.

 

Emoticons can be culture-specific. The three capital letters OTL in some cultures represent a kneeling person and represents failure, disappointment or despair; the O is the head, the T the body with the top of the T representing the two arms, and the L the bent legs.

 

For a bit more on emoticons see this article. Wikipedia has a good page, too.

Poems are a form of texting, says the poet laureate

The poem is the original text, said Carol Ann Duffy, the poet laureate, in an interview with The Guardian. Just as with texting, in poetry you can "say more with less" and "it allows feelings and ideas to travel big distances in a very condensed form".

 

The Guardian challenged its readers to pen a verse or two about a story in the news in textspeak. Some of their efforts are in the comments here.

 

I reprinted a couple of text poems in this old post.

Smartphones' autocorrect errors

The Daily Mail has a piece today on unwitting, but amusing, errors made by smartphones' tendency to wrongly predict the word you are typing. Most of the examples given are obviously made up, and very contrived, but these errors do happen. Modern phones apparently take account of the words you use most often and tend to assume that that is what you mean when you type the first couple of letters of a word. So, if you use the word 'kill' more often than 'kiss', you might surprise a friend when you tell him about taking a girl out and kissing her. Examples offered by readers in the comments include a woman who was bemused to be addressed as 'big lips' in her nightly text from her boyfriend, until he told her that what he had meant to say was 'big kiss'.

 

On a traditional mobile phone where each number key represents three or four letters, you are unlikely to be offered kill for kiss, as they involve different number keys, but there are many textonyms around ie words which are produced using the same number keys. So, press 7663 and possible words are some, Rome, roof, pond, and others. 7378378 produces both request and pervert, and 2276243 could be barmaid or carnage.

 

The examples given in the article are humorous and harmless. However, there was a case earlier this year where someone killed a friend over a misspelt text message. He had meant to write 'mutter' but his friend read 'nutter'.

Slang initiatives in Wales and Scotland

NHS chiefs in the Lothians (near Edinburgh) are considering texting patients, and using slang, in an attempt to get more of them to attend hospital appointments, and read healthy-lifestyle-related messages. Over 20% of the population of the area are functionally illiterate and may be missing out on important information and messages. Research has shown that some people have difficulty understanding the correspondence sent to them, and difficulty understanding what is on offer across the region's health services. There is a link between functional illiteracy and poor health.

 

Here is that story.

 

Meanwhile, in Newport, South Wales, the university is hoping to make students from outside the region feel more welcome and at home by issuing a mobile phone app translating Newport slang.

 

Here's a report on that story.

Victorian textspeak

These days we call it text messaging. In the 19th century it was emblematic poetry, but the two things are very similar. A poem called An Essay to Miss Catherine Jay, which dates back to the 1840s, reads:

He says he loves U 2 X S,
U R virtuous and Y's,
In X L N C U X L
All others in his i's.

There is also this elegy (LEG) to Miss Emily Kay (MLE K):

Sad nymphs of UL, U have much to cry for,
Sweet MLE K U never more shall C!
O SX maids! come hither, and VU,
With tearful I this MT LEG.

The British Library recently announced details of its exhibition later in the year devoted to the English language, and it will be exhibiting examples such as the poems above. More on the exhibition here. The second poem above comes from the Visual Thesaurus.  

New words with the suffix -exting

I missed this article by Erin McKean when it was first published a couple of weeks ago. She considers the salacious words that have been coined using the ending -exting. Here are some she mentions:

chexting: cheating on a partner via text messages with a lover

brexting: breaking up with someone by text

drexting: texting whilst drunk

confexting: confessing something via a text message

Most new phenomena and technology do not give rise to such an influx of new language. Kissogram and strippergram are based on telegram, but they appeared in the language decades later.

Read the full article here.

US professors irritated by text speak from students

Californian professors are becoming increasingly irritated by the use of abbreviations and 'text speak' by their students. It's not that the students are writing academic assignments this way, the professors are mostly referring to emails they receive from students. The professors' objection is mainly due to their considering it an unprofessional style of writing in the workplace (eg being addressed as 'yo teach'), although occasionally students use acronyms and abbreviations that their teachers cannot understand. The students admit that they use the texting abbreviations inadvertently and sometimes don't even notice them, because most of their writing these days is done via texts, emails to friends, Facebook etc where this form of writing is acceptable. Story here.

Texting improves language skills

A study carried out by developmental psychologists at Coventry University has disproved the commonly held perception that using abbreviations and other text-speak has a negative effect on literacy. Children who are proficient at texting are usually good spellers. They are more phonologically aware ie can recognise sound patterns and the relationship between letters and sounds. Texting also helps children become more aware of rhyme.

Texting can benefit weaker readers and spellers who would generally shun books and the written word, as texting can give them exposure to written English, which they would not get otherwise.

The research was carried out on 63 children aged between 8 and 12. Here's the Coventry University press release.