Socialist Gamer Review

Chat speak on the other side

By Ravenhawk | January 27, 2007

I dislike chat speak as much as anyone else, but I also like playing devil’s advocate.

While it is an abomination of the English language, chat speak allows people to communicate a lot faster. Society is general these days seems to want to do everything as fast as they can.

Mark Twain, that guy who wrote Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Fin, and a bunch of other stuff I never read, was a large proponent of trying to make the English language phonetic. In a way, chat speak is the realization of that dream. Many words are simplified, extra letters (coughvowelscough) are removed…

There are easily arguments that could be made for the use of chat speak. I perfer, however, that the people I play games with type ‘literately’ or, like they have more than a first grade education.