As a teenager, I liked to try to be cool by offering congrats instead of congratulations or referring to an invite rather than an invitation. Having signed up today for an “invite” to yet another website that’s supposed to change everything, I realised that I’m just over it. Today, the dropping of -ation is everywhere and it just isn’t fun any more.
I’ve searched my thoughts to see if I’ve just turned into an old fart. There’s probably a bit of that. After all, English is a living language and all that. I just think that if you’re going to abbreviate, you have to know it’s an abbreviation. I wonder if generation Z (or whatever lazy demographers call it) is even going to know that invite is a verb not a noun, or that info is missing two syllables.
The spellchecker, as I type this, has not queried info or congrats, but thinks I should change “any more” to “anymore.”
I don’t think that’s an evolving language.
Apparently we have to start getting used to these changes. For example this is suppose to die ;
ReplyDeleteadvert signs just dont use this anymore. and folks, another strange word, are picking up the habit and dropping the semi colon. apparent.
Naming generations is just stupid. Unless you're talking about a specific group of people like the Lost Generation and not everybody born during the same decades.
ReplyDeleteWe've always abbreviated words. G'day instead of good day, 'see ya', instead of I'll see you later, 'on ya', instead of good on you? These and many more abbreviated words and phrases have been around for yonks!
ReplyDeleteNowadays it's all about texting. Everything is abbreviated to make communication by typing quicker..kind of like Morse code or shorthand I guess. In fact if I was going to call the latest teen generation anything it would be Tech Gen. A generation that relies very heavily on communication by computer technology. Fast communication is much more important to kids these days than worrying about using a verb or a noun in the correct context.
My parents and grandparents abbreviated words and when I was a teen I used the latest abbreviations to sound cool or rebellious. My kids do the same but I wonder, because of the need for swift communication, they do it more for convenience than for stigma. We'll probs never know!