Thursday morning's Wall Street Journal has a front-page article on the evolution of the written English language courtesy of gamers and text-messaging.
For years, heavy users of Internet games and chat groups have conversed in their own written language, often indecipherable to outsiders. Now, some of those online words are gaining currency in popular culture -- even in spoken form.
Online gamers use "pwn" to describe annihilating an opponent, or owning them. The word came from misspelling "own" by gamers typing quickly and striking the letter P instead of the neighboring letter O. Other words substitute symbols or numbers for similar-looking letters, such as the number 3 for the letter E. The language is sometimes called elite speak, or leetspeak, written as l33t 5p34k.
This, predictably but understandably, has some concerned:
The words' growing offline popularity has stoked the ire of linguists, parents and others who denounce them as part of a broader debasement of the English language.
"There used to be a time when people cared about how they spoke and wrote," laments Robert Hartwell Fiske, who has written or edited several books on proper English usage, including one on overused words titled "The Dimwit's Dictionary."
The article does not refer to any language laws or policies that should or should not exist, but it made me think of the various official languages some argue for from time to time. Yes, there must be some standards. Your documents must make sense to readers. I get numerous emails from students that, quite frankly, are nearly unreadable. I've also received formal academic papers from students that I have returned after reading - or, more accurately, after trying to read - the first paragraph. But why are laws needed?
I'm not a linguist so I can't speak authoritatively on language trends. But it seems that, like markets, languages spontaneously evolve over time. Just compare stuff from Chaucer's time to today's English. Languages evolve when people discover, even accidentally new ways to write and say things. The change may be due to an increase in the efficiency of writing (RU is easier to write than "are you") or some new word may be cooler than before. It also seems to be that official language laws have a bit of snobbery in them, a belief that today's version of language x is the best now and for all time. Having official languages get in the way of the natural evolution of languages.
And if people want to have something presented to them in a particular language, somebody in the market will provide it.
Update: Coyote has likens languages to open source code.
One of the great things about modern English is that it is bottom-up and open-source. Years ago, the Oxford English Dictionary took the approach of documenting what English is, rather than the French approach of dictating what the language should be. As a result, the language evolves based on how ordinary people are using it. Which is perhaps why the word in many languages for new trends and technologies is often the English word (much to the consternation of the French).