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Article: The Death of English (LOL).(The Technologist)(text messaging)
- Article from:
- Newsweek International
- Article date:
- August 11, 2008
- Author:
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Byline: Lily Huang
In an experiment, the more adept children were at text messaging, the better they did in spelling and writing.
The most hotly contested controversy sparked by the text-messaging phenomenon of the past eight years is over truant letters. "Textese," a nascent dialect of English that subverts letters and numbers to produce ultra-concise words and sentiments, is horrifying language loyalists and pedagogues. And their fears are stoked by some staggering numbers: this year the world is on track to produce 2.3 trillion messages--a nearly 20 percent increase from 2007 and almost 150 percent from 2000. The accompanying revenue for telephone ...