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Opinion

Language evolution is good -- to an extent

Zach Lee
Opinion Columnist 

Many of today's college upperclassmen and recent graduates grew up in the infant years of instant messaging when it was perfectly acceptable to ask what "lol," "omg" or the slightly sleazy "asl" meant. 

But there's something the matter with kids today.

Students in middle school and high school are increasingly letting the techno abbreviations they use in text messages and online conversations into their schoolwork, The Associated Press reported Saturday.

So-called IM-speak is like the robot version of "ain't," and some teachers think it's a signal of the coming end of the English language. 

It would be hard to argue the logic of using IM-speak in a term paper or some formal document, but formal writing in English has a way of being remarkably resistant to any kind of change. Take out the calligraphy, and formal documents from hundreds of years ago are strikingly similar to the formal documents of today. What changes have happened, have happened at a snail's pace.

In that sense, only the most liberal writers would consider it good form to include what must be considered on the cutting edge of the English language -- IM-speak -- in final drafts of school papers.

At the same time, however, IM-speak and its trendier cousin leetspeak -- a slight variation often used by online gamers and computer programmers -- are examples of one of the fundamental qualities of the English language: the ability to adapt.

English has been heavily influenced by both the Germanic and Romantic languages through different invasions and wars. 

In the New World, it also picked up a couple words here and there from the native peoples, and in the information age, English is often the language of choice for describing new technological advances and capabilities. 

William Shakespeare, so often associated with the stuffy air of rigid language tradition by those with only a passing knowledge of his work, was an innovator who created new forms of words if he needed them.

English is a language with a penchant for change, and even though students should cite Wikipedia as a legitimate source before they spell "before" "b4" on a midterm, the fact that IM-speak has become so prevalent today is not a cause for any real concern.

Teachers should still count off when kids use "rofl" on an assignment. Those same kids could be running our country in a few years. 

Otherwise, our children and grandchildren could stand and pledge allegiance 2 the flag someday, and that would just be plain embarrassing. 

Lee, an English/Spanish senior, 
can be reached via dccampus@mail.uh.edu