New Gen communication or more like Miscommunication

By saying “New Gen” I do not mean to eliminate myself from it and sound like a critical old soul. Apparently I like proper language usage even though I, myself, am infected by the same “urban dictionary” virus today.

I know that it is the lack of space on the social media and the reluctance to type so much, is what caused the need for abbreviated versions of words/phrases, but I also notice that today youngsters make mistakes in spelling most basic words such as "friend" or "tomorrow" for they have been using abbreviated version too frequently. I notice that while typing a formal official email/report we have to be extra careful for the chances of writing “you” as “u”, or “before” as “b4” or “tomorrow” as “2moro” are too high. It is embedded in our subconscious now due to constant feeding.

We may be talking more on chat messengers, social media but our syntax and semantics are at an all time low. Lot of verbal expressions have been replaced by and restricted to the emojis/emoticons or stickers available and we are perfectly fine with that and not prefer to describe it in more appropriate words.

 Then there is this new fad “Selfies”, let me just say clicking selfies at every place you visit is not an expression of admiration for the place or an expression of excitement of visiting the place (otherwise you will be clicking a picture of the place and not just your face).  

Let us not forget those three dots”…” that have completely taken over our written communications. Every self typed message I see, I find more number of dots than alphabets. What we were taught was that a full-stop means the end of the statement. Now three full stops sitting there is like a mystery. You never know if the person wants you to fill in with something more or is it is there for the lack of a better word and left to the interpretation of the reader. At times its neither and I wonder why those are put there.  

Indians learnt their English from British, I know British were not a good side they killed, looted and enslaved all, but we owe it to them. On the other hand, Americans taught us about a lot of things, globalization, technology, outsourcing, sitcoms but a botched up version of English with more slangs. But who cares America is the most powerful economy and powerful ought to be the best and we must follow the best. But we do not just follow, we first “Indiannise” everything foreign to suit our palate. And we came up with “Hinglish”. No wonder we have more than 1500 spoken languages in India, we added one more to that list.