'Textspeak' or 'Netspeak' are not new terms for me and people have been arguing about whether Textspeak will affect the language standard of students, especially for younger students where they haven’t been mastered the rules of language very well. Teachers would be very worried about the English proficiency of the students, as they have to handle public examinations.
I remember when I first learnt to use ICQ in Form 2. My proficiency of English was not good enough to chat with my friends in complete English sentence, but on the other hand, I didn’t know how to type Chinese characters either (yet), so I tried to use Cantonese written as English, like ‘ng’ (唔), final particles, like ‘la’ (啦), acronyms, like BTW, LOL.
I have a cousin living in Canada and one day he MSN-ed me and chat with me. Later on, I found out that I have to force myself to use English in MSN and SMS to communicate since I have to talk to him. At the beginning, it was quite difficult because I have to use English to express different meanings as the sentence structure of Chinese and English are quite contrastive. But it became easier when I used it everyday and I can even type English faster.
What I want to bring out is that using Textspeak didn’t worsen my English, but the opposite. I found out that I am more capable in constructing a complete sentence, just like when I MSN or SMS my friends, I will just type out what I want to say in the message. By ‘practicing’ everyday, I can type English faster with my keyboard with construct a sentence more smoothly. I totally agree with what David Crystal said about txt. I think people who use Textspeak doesn’t necessary make you stupid, but to make you become more capable to distinguish the difference between Standard English and Textspeak and to use it wisely.
