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In the absence of a perfect translator, Amglish stands ready to help. It’s far from perfect, but it can get the job done.

FROM SNAIL MAIL TO E-MAIL

No computer function has been more effective in promoting Amglish in recent years than e-mail. This freewheeling system of communicating is also ideal for experimenting with language. Its versatility allows users not only to send and receive messages instantly but to add pictures and documents almost without limit.

In less than two decades of widespread use, e-mail has obliterated more outmoded language rules than all the Bushes and Palins combined. It has also left the U.S. Postal Service’s “snail mail” with even larger deficits because of the changes e-mail has made in personal communications.

Perhaps its most significant accomplishment has been to turn traditional patterns of personal correspondence upside down. The art of letter writing used to be taught in school, but no course is necessary to learn how to communicate via e-mail. All you need to know is how to use the computer keyboard and connect it to the Internet.

This type of e-freedom is so exhilarating that many users disregard all they ever learned about writing—or common courtesy. In the typical e-mail, there are few, if any, capital letters, punctuation marks, or similar impediments to even informal writing. In such an atmosphere, many people act as if they can let it all hang out. They don’t realize that everything they write is etched permanently on the hard drive and can be resurrected later.

THE HIRSCHFELD VIRUS

Such e-mail practices brought a mock warning from Washington Post writer Bob Hirschfeld, when he wrote that an attack of the deadly Strunkenwhite virus would automatically return e-mails to senders if they committed any grammatical or spelling errors. He added, “The virus is causing something akin to panic throughout corporate America.”18

Actually, there was no panic in the business world because everyone knows what to expect with e-mail. Taking liberties with spelling and grammar are no longer considered abnormal or surprising. Indeed, many e-mailers may no longer be able to tell what a grammatical or spelling error looks like.

A bigger problem for most people is spam, including the unwanted offers from Nigerians to make you rich quick if you will only send them your PIN numbers and bank account passwords. A further downside is what might be called e-mail fatigue, the increasing habit of not immediately responding to messages and then losing sight of them for good on the screen.

What makes e-mailing and texting such perfect laboratories for developing new language is not only their sense of freedom from rules but the virtual absence of editing. This can lead naturally to misunderstandings, but they pale in comparison to the challenge of finding meaning in a collection of jumbled letters, numbers, and spaces.

The language of chat rooms is often even more informal and disjointed than in e-mail. That’s because participants don’t usually know each other except through the Internet and because of the speed with which messages are exchanged. When you’re up to such speed, who needs to worry about syntax and similar details?

A NEW STUDY AREA?

Are all of these lowercase letters, missing periods, misspellings, casual grammar, and other departures from formal English signs of a new type of language being formed?

The answer is yes, and David Crystal is already on the case with a 2011 book entitled Internet Linguistics: A Student Guide. It focuses on text messaging, e-mailing, chat groups, virtual worlds, and the World Wide Web as new areas of study for linguists.

The book describes the growing use of these services by teachers for giving assignments, conducting classroom discussions, providing student access to libraries from off campus, and presenting guest speakers via Skype, the online international phone service. The tech term for all this is “computer-mediated communication,” or CMC.

Also included in the above term is the entire emerging photosphere, including photo blogs, video logs, audio