L33T Speak legitimized

Plastic has an article called A Circle Jerk Of L33t 8ull5h1t, which is about the increasing tendency of a portion of the computing culture to use an extremely abbreviated shorthand typing language to communicate electronically. To some, like the author of o my fkng gd, this is an abhorrent bastardization of the English language. That’s almost an oxymoron, though, isn’t it? English is probably one of the least consistent, bastardized languages already. Where do you think ‘quake, shake, quiver, shiver’ all came from, if not through mis-spelling? [more examples]

To others, like this comment, Well … I think I disagree a little with folks, which is really well written and makes many good points, it’s a natural evolution such as English continues to undergo every day. It’s always the same thing, though: “ok, I’ve learned how this works now, so stop changing it and I don’t have to learn anymore. I know what’s going on, all change is bad starting now.”

That’s a bad philosophy in any case, but a positively laughable one when defending the English language. Have you ever objectively examined you you spell in English? Do you ever think about the grammar rules we take for granted? It makes no sense at all right now…how is this new truncated spelling any worse? At least it strives for some phonetic spelling instead of this guessing (silent ‘e’, two ‘s’s) that you have to do in order to spell now.