Amglish In, Like, Ten Easy Lessons_ A Celebration of the New World Lingo - Arthur E. Rowse [57]
THUMBS UP FOR A CHAMPION TEXTER
Who’s the best texter in the world? In the United States?
Nobody really knows, but fifteen-year-old Kate Moore of Iowa beat out twenty other contestants in the U.S. National Texting Championship in June 2009 by sending 14,000 messages a month, according to Discover magazine.14 She won $50,000, and she did it while blindfolded—like the other contestants.
The magazine’s news release unfairly wondered “whether she was sacrificing human contact and, possibly, communication skills, all for the sake of her glowing cell phone screen.” Of course, the winner denied the accusation and maintained that she, like, keeps good grades and is otherwise normal. She said texting helps her prepare for exams because it can help her look back at things to review. So there, editor.
A HEALTH WARNING
A decade ago, the cell phone world was abuzz with fears that excessive use could cause brain cancer. Evidence was scattered and inconclusive since it was based on individual cases. So cell phone makers and doctors got together for a conclusive study designed to settle the question, with 13,000 participants involved.
When the results were announced in May 2010, they showed that those who conducted the study should have telephoned each other more. The main finding was inconclusive. As Elisabeth Cardis, the study leader in Barcelona, explained, “This was a very complex study, and results were very difficult to interpret because of a number of methodological issues.” Sort of like a giant busy signal among the study participants.
But what about the busy digit that does all the texting? Sending so many text messages every day can make even a tough thumb rather sore. Names for the problem include RSS (repetitive stress syndrome), “Blackberry Thumb,” and “teentexting tendonitis.”
The cure? Outside of quitting or reducing phone time, both obvious nonstarters, the best treatment, according to C. Forrest McDowell, Ph.D., is Solomon’s Seal, an herbal plant with tiny white flowers that is also said to cure other ailments. However, as everyone knows, digital diarrhea is incurable, especially among the young.
THE PRESSURE TO INNOVATE
Another major issue is the necessity that most texting be done with the letters and numbers on the telephone dial. Since there are three or four letters on eight of the numbered buttons, it means that each number must be touched one or more times to indicate which letter or number is intended by the caller.
For example, if you want to tell a good friend to “get lost,” you must hit the number 4 once, the number 3 twice, and the number 8 once merely to send the word “get”; then follow the same procedure for the second word. Phones like Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone make texting slightly less difficult with their full but miniature keyboards.
CALL HER DOCTOR OF TEXTING
Let’s all sing praises for Dr. Caroline Tagg for parlaying her craze for txtg into a doctorate in the subject at Birmingham U.15 She endured some 11,000 text messages containing 190,000 words—not much for a teenager—sent by 235 people before finding that people text in the same way they speak, using unnecessary words and fuzzy grammar. Her 80,000-word thesis concluded that there is more to texting than just abbreviations.
In a comment to the press, she dipped into a little informal English: “People use playful manipulation and metaphors. It is a playful language. Not only are they quite creative, it is also quite expressive.” Will the next doctorate at BU be in Amglish?
In order to keep within these tight parameters, many users have devised an elaborate array of abbreviations, acronyms, emoticons, numbers, and codes to shorten thoughts to fit. “Love you” comes out as luv u in English, tq for te quier in Spanish, and ta for ti amo in Italian.
Such fractionalized