1432 (I Love You Too)

In the age of tweeting, texting and instant messaging words don’t matter as much.  Not actual words.  Not words with capital letters.  Not words with both vowels and consonants.  “R u chillin?” now qualifies as a sentence.  1432 translates into “I love you too.”  IDTS means “I don’t think so.”

Slang and abbreviated forms of communication have always been with us.  But the trend to truncate today is widespread and runs deep into the use of language.  The language is often blunt and without beauty.

We are shrinking our vocabulary.  As a whole, we simply don’t use as many words.  As example, the average teen in America (and much of the rest of the world) has experienced a dramatic decline in their overall vocabulary in the last fifty years.  Fifty years ago a teen commanded something in the vicinity of 24,000 words.  Today, the average teen has mastered somewhere near 10,000 words.

Clearly, the languages used for texting and tweeting are of value.   They offer a convenient and concise form of messaging when such is required.  Sometimes you need to communicate quickly.  As John Lennon said: “When you’re drowning you don’t think, I would be incredibly pleased if someone would notice I’m drowning and come and rescue me.  You just scream.”  But what if we lose both flourish and nuance in our present state on constant expedience?  What if words like tintinnabulation vanish?  Shouldn’t we all use that word at least once in our life when describing the sound of church bells?

Maybe Jarod Kintz put it the best: “Writers fish for the right words like fishermen fish for, um, whatever those aquatic creatures with fins and gills are called.”

--Mitchell Hegman