08: Language Problems

My human beans speak a language called English.  From my (admittedly limited) understanding, this is a language that has evolved and developed over many years, and has given rise to some wonderful writings in both prose and poetry.

However, my personal experience (again, admittedly limited) is that most human beans have been sadly mis-educated in their native language (or refuse to admit, and evidence, that education). This seems significantly worse among younger beans - so perhaps something happened to the education system at a specific point.

So, the younger beans have adopted a variation of the language, presumably to exercise their independence from previous generations of beans. This has always happened - ever since the 1950s when teenagers were invented. These teenagers rebelled against the attitudes, behaviour, dress and language of their elders.  However, language changes accelerated with the proliferation of ‘soshal meedya’, where the young talk to each other on screens using capital letters and little pictures.  This soshal meedya even has its own language, largely using abbreviations.

I can’t understand all of these but my simple dictionary includes the following guesses:

LOL means Runt (or Last Of the Litter).

ILY means I Love Yoghurt

4COL means Four Labradors Or Collies

AML means All My Legs

ROFL means Running On Four Legs

SNERT means Snot-Nosed Egotistical Rude Terrier

WWJD means Who Was Jesus’ Dog?

.... and so on.

Of course, I have little need for such phrases, let alone their abbreviated form. I did think of including some in this blog but the feedback I get is that my readers are somewhat older than the typical users of such language. (They are less ‘hip’, more  ‘hip replacement’.)

Actually I bemoan the loss of the wonderful language used when beans used to write ‘proper’ letters to one another ... but it probably just shows that I’m getting on a bit.

Rheumatism and dementia await.  

Hope they don’t take away my sunny disposition!