Re: This was interesting...

    When it comes to language, Crystal evidently suffers from
    the same gallumphing anaesthesia as all his Welsh compatriots -
    most notably, of course, in recent years Dylan Thomas.

    The poor chap doesn't realise that the usages he lists are
    as contrived & pathetic as the passwords we all acquired
    as eleven year olds when we wrote in to join the International
    Society of Secret Chums. He hasn't yet grasped that writing
    IMHO or ROTFL or even IIGTBOOTG- is as embarrassing
    to observe as the new curate turning up hopefully at the Young
    Christians carrying his guitar & trying desperately to remember
    the words of the gangstarap he mugged up the night before.

    The moment you 'vocabularise' a supposedly current slang,
    you kill it - or, rather, your own prospects of acceptance.
    It's like studying a dictionary of Cockney rhyming slang &
    thinking you'll be mistaken in Whitechapel for one of Fagan's
    lads. In reality, they use hardly any of that stuff.

    My grandchildren certainly use some of the abbreviations
    on their mobile phones - where the screen is so small. But on
    a computer, it's just too much trouble retraining your fingers
    to confine themselves to lower case & checking the appropriate
    acronyms is just too uncool.

    After all, when did anyone last use a smiley on Bananafish?

    Scottie B.

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Received on Wed Oct 8 05:02:10 2003