I frequently go to sites like Failbook or Lamebook which exploits many strange and quirky wall posts of today’s young people; one thing I have noticed is that the new generation cannot spell or put together grammatically correct sentences. In addition, what’s more appalling is that the new generation use excessive amount of shorthand in their typed messages.
With the Chinese speaking population, I’ve also begun to see the degradation of the Mandarin language in Taiwan. While it’s true that when I speak Mandarin, I don’t pronounce everything properly (Due to my southern accent) however today’s generation of kids seem to not bother differentiating between ZH and Z, CH and C, SH and S sounds. Coupled by the fact that Taiwanese girls seem to love to speak with high pitches and throw in baby talk, my question to the world is:
What is happening to language?
Why can’t we speak or write properly anymore?
I’m curious if there’s shorthand in Chinese text conversations. I personally am not that familiar with Chinese internet lingo, but I can’t see you dropping strokes from a Chinese character. I guess you can drop entire characters.
When I chat online, I typically forgo capitalization and sometimes punctuation. I also use web lingo (i.e. lol, imho, etc.) on a regular basis. However, I’d like to think when I chat, my sentences are still grammatically correct and words are spelled correctly. I have to agree it becomes a bit annoying with how some people chat online these days.
Ah. The tongue curling! I don’t really speak Mandarin on a regular basis as most of my friends speak English. At home I would speak Cantonese to my parents. So I can’t really say I’ve noticed the dropping of the tongue curling. Though I remember when I was in Chinese school, many people would have trouble with learning ZH, CH, and SH.
There’s really not much shorthand in Chinese text communication aside from simplified Chinese in writing. (My written Chinese is a hybrid of traditional and simplified) The closest thing I can think of for shorthand in Chinese text is for the Taiwanese who sometimes like to insert the Chinese alphabet into their sentences.
我的東西 would be 我ㄉ東西