Texting is blamed for many of society's ills - repetitive strain injury to the thumb, lamppost accidents, car crashes - but its impact on the nation's literacy skills is always a hot topic.
The Daily Mail and The Guardian have picked up on a press release from an online parenting site, Bounty, who claim that parents are so crazed by text speak that they can't even spell their kids' names properly and are resorting to txt spk. So we're getting names like Flicity, Ana, Samiul, Conna, Lora and Cam'ron.
So, are these the result of grim educational standards brought about by text language, attempts to make otherwise dull kids' names sound so very special, or just the result of deranged parents being a bit dumb? The Guardian likes to think it's smarter than The Daily Mail - and of course, it is - so its writer Tim Dowling suggests that Cam'ron is actually named after a rapper, while Samiul is a fairly common Pakistani name. The Daily Mail, obsessed as it is with all things terrible in this society - teenagers who chew gum, crazy environmentalists who want to save the planet, nasty immigrants - sees the dark side: we're all doomed and its txspk wot dun it.
Useful for:
ENA5 - Language Change
ENA6 - Language Debates
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