Hw 2 b KeWl @t ur eNgL!$h

This is a competitive world. When the folks say you have to fight it out right from when you are off the womb, they aren't wrong. Charles Darwin explained it in his theory of evolution, Shakespeare exercised it his writing flamboyance. Now, if you are an nonathletic fluffy kinda person, you are likely to take refuge in internet. Orkut/Facebook/Twitter weren't there since Leaning tower of Pisa started leaning, they weren't even there when i (or we, in general sense) were exposed to internet. There was Google for searching, & there was yahoo for chatting.

So, me, a nonathletic fluffy kid, entered cyber cafes in late 2003 (yeah, you might claim it was too late & lame, but please let's not ponder over it). Soon followed Yahoo Chat Rooms ! The first time i was inquired my ASL, i was gaping air. I tried to wave it off, but when the question became a regularity, i checked with one of my more-savvy friends for the answer. Moving on, you had to be cool. Cool isn't enough, you had to be Kewl. The school-taught-English just doesn't get your aspirations. You need to get into that chat lingo, which i did to some extent. By the end of this time, I've learnt enough to permanently replace "The" with "D", "your" with "ur", "you" with "u", "that" with "dat" in my mental dictionary. I was learning to be cool.

Later, Most of my cool writing skills came from Anurag Lal Sinha, who taught us how cool it sounds to omit maximum possible vowels from your words. We were sure this is what needs to be done to be kewl. When i look at my initial blog posts, i see it in vast extent way back in 2007, here for instance.

I was enlightened one day that this $h!t needs to be shed. & it was done by & large.

Now, i find kids (yes, I'd prefer to call them kids) doing the inevitable. Quoting some instances

• Status Msg: Belief iN DoinG D Thing$ WHaT BoDY Refu$e$ To Do ..But It$ aCtuAlly D mIND Who RefU$e$ To Do ...$o pLay With Yr MiND With D heLP oF YR HEArt & BoDy.....
• Album Name: OnCe Up()N A tImE iN g()AAAA
• Comment: somthing z overshadowed by daylight murder of 20 year old student n dat too in national capital, so m not in fancy... rather i blv in ground reality.

 

Ofcourse the Text Messaging mannerism has contributed. & it's not just about saving typing space & efforts. I don't find this atrocious, but definitely adolescent. Like Raghu keeps repeating in Roadies' auditions - Wannabes, at-least at the inception of this behavior. Also, i observe here that it's an addiction, as people into it are not likely to return back to normalcy easily. I haven't found any application that specifically dudi-fies a simple sentence into a handy array of small & capital letters, but i assume there should be some, like this. In my research work prior to this post, i also could not manage to find any connotation of diseases associated with this behavior (so i assume the onus is on us). Regardless of everything said & done, I personally find replacement of a/o/s/i with @/()/$/! very very innovative.

It's apt to associate Hip-Hop/Rap genre of music with this wannabe attitude. As an evidence, please allow me to quote this excerpt from How to Be Cool at Hip Hop page

Forget the basics of the english language: As with rapping, try to retrain your tongue to move left to right rather than the more natural feeling (and sounding) up and down as you form words. If you only use one side of your mouth for talking it will create the impression that you have been capped in the face, and street violence is the coolest aspect of hip hop. Also, occasionally omitting vowels from words and forgetting to include words like "and" and "the" will make you look less like you grew up in well-to-do areas, and make strangers assume you were raised by wild dogs in the backyard of your Russian parent's slum house. Hopefully some day you will learn to speak your native tongue again and be able to forgive your family for the years of rehabilitation and psychotherapy that are sure to be required for assisting your return to human society.

It's just a phase in most likelihood, that would (and should) pass over. But it's remarkable how modifiable we are. The power of peer pressure at it's driving best. I thank, abstractly, that Hindi has been spared. At the same time, i do appreciate the truth how boring life would be if people just walked in straight lines.

PS: I ain't taking pot-shots at anyone. Please accept my apologies for any blood shed.