“wfm, cul8r. i gtg nd thnk my friend. TTFN dood.” What does this mean…? A code? Some sort of foreign language? No. This is a text I received from my cousin. The message translates to “Works for me, see you later. I have to go and thank my friend. Ta-ta for now dude.” After sitting in a confused state, contemplating my obvious lack of knowledge of the modern day text message abbreviations, I came to the conclusion that text messaging and the new “language” that technology is bringing into the world is taking over the English language that we have come to know.

Although texting can be a useful form of communication, it’s exasperating to hear people say “LOL” and “JK” out loud. Sherry Turkle, a writer for the New York Times who has done numerous test and examinations on the effects of texting says, “Face-to-face conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience. When we communicate on our digital devices, we learn different habits. As we ramp up the volume and velocity of online connections, we start to expect faster answers” (Kluger). Nobody has conversations any more. Those awkward encounters where you have to actually talk, and think of what to say, are of the past. With text messaging, people think of the perfect phrase and line to text back. Even the mere conversation on the phone is being surpassed by the use of texts. Does anyone want to listen to a long talk on the phone with his or her parents asking about “how school went” or “what you did today”? No, of course not. But, when people are constantly reaching for their phones to text someone back, the abbreviations and acronyms leak into the English vernacular that we use today. The number of times throughout a day I hear the phrase “BRB” and “JK” are innumerable.

Development psychologists are particularly concerned with the affects of texting on teenagers and the younger generation. By the time texting devices came into the world most of the adults of this age had a mental capacity that was already fully developed. Now, with teenagers texting as much as they do, and with their brains not as refined, it can have a more permanent affect on their cognitive development. Each day, on average, people check their phones over 150 times. Humanity is addicted. University of Pennsylvania’s Chad Lassiter sees the decline in communication and grammar abilities every day, saying, “We're looking at some of these writing skills and what I'm noticing is [that] there is miscommunication due to the fact that their communication is so limited.” But even the facts don’t seem to stop, let alone slow us down with our hand held devices.

But maybe this is how it’s supposed to be. Maybe our society is being led this way just as societies of the past have been led in their own language changes. Gone are the days of the “thy” and “Methought” of Shakespearian English in the 16th century, transformed into the “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done” of Charles Dickens in the 19th century, then into “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” of George Orwell in the 20th century, and now with the technology that is available to us, the LOL’s and BRB’s that we have heard so frequently could be cemented into our language. The English language changes over periods of time, and with the rate at which technology is advancing these days, these intervals of conversion happen more frequently. Soon, we won’t be speaking at all. The world will turn into a group of technological based, well-educated zombies, texting and emailing each other with the occasional grunt and moan towards somebody.

Often times the usage of language depends on your location. Where one’s from, where one goes, and the people one is surrounded by can have a huge impact on the way one speaks. My dad tells a story about two French men. Both go to the University of Brest, both study English, and both study abroad for a year to better learn the English language. One goes to Galway, in the west of Ireland, to study at the University of Galway, and the other, to Oxford University, in England. Both studied, and both came out of their time in the respective countries with a better understanding of the English language. But, the man who went to the University of Galway, played soccer with the “lads”, had a FOUL mouth, and the English that he learned was very different from the proper, “Queen’s English” that the other student learned at Oxford. In the modern era, with the excessive amount of technology that we have available to us, it makes sense that you hear the LOL’s and BRB’s that we come across daily. Basically, we assimilate what we are exposed to.

It’s impossible to preserve a constant version of the English language. With the rapidly changing technological growth that we possess, along with the addiction and constant fixation of checking and re-checking one’s device, we are undoubtedly going to fall into a bottomless pit of speaking with text abbreviations and acronyms. There is no way that the English language, as we know it, can be saved with the changes that have already been leaked into our speech due to the new forms of texting.