A lot of people are under the impression that text speak has come from the young people of today, originating through the use of more social media and texting, but actually, this isn't quite true. Granted it has become significantly more common, but actually, the abbreviations within text speak have been around for hundreds of years which Professor David Crystal mentions during an interview. It's hard to believe that the common language we use today when sending messages and writing tweets was actually around long before we even had all this social media. This means that abbreviations weren't created by kids from the last two decades.
Crystal also states that not all text messages are full of abbreviations, in fact, only 10% are, so it hasn't completely taken over modern communication.
The main problem we have now is whether or not text speak and modern technology is destroying the English Language, and will these new words that come from new technologies ruin it?
In some opinions, using text speak makes the user seem less intelligent, although, this isn't quite the case. People who purposely use text speak and abbreviations actually have to know the words first so that they then know the abbreviation, since text speak is mostly popular by people who think using it will make them sound cool. Upon knowing the word, they have to know which letters to remove in order to make it the abbreviation.
When students were asked whether or not they would use text speak or abbreviations in exams and essays, the students responses indicated that it would be silly as they would lose marks, and actually, Crystal found that people who use text speak are actually more academic than those who do not use it, which goes against what most people would think.
However, this research was conducted quite a few years ago and so isn't exactly necessarily relevant to the youths of today. Whereas kids then might have known that text speak would make them lose marks in essays, if kids today have access to phones and other forms of social media at a younger age, then they are likely to become too used to text speak and actually not know how things are meant to be spelled. This could then cause confusion when actually needing to write properly.
Messages do look nicer when they are actually written properly using correct grammar and punctuation as this means that it is a lot less likely for people to become confused by not knowing what some aspects of text speak mean, by using regular English, people are able to communicate in a way that makes sense to everyone and this overall will be much better for everyone overall.
