Singlestalk: Twitter Galaxy

Saturday, December 10, 2011

MICHELLE: Do you have Twitter? Do you own a Galaxy? I know a lot has been written and said about the Internet and the phenomenon it created to change the way we communicate. Almost everyone has a mobile phone, probably except my grandma, who is 100 years old. Our country holds the distinction as the “texting capital of the world.”

In the order of priorities, cellphone load wins over food anytime. I read that teens would rather spend their money on cellphone load than on snacks. No wonder kids today are so slim! Kidding aside, texting has so affected the youth that it has led to their garbled and worsening writing and spelling skills. Sometimes, I’m not even sure anymore of a word’s correct spelling because of the shortcuts we use when texting. Thank God for predictive text and spell check.

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Darwin: That’s true. I remember I once had this desire to have only the essential things in life. One time while I was in Manila, I told a good friend and spiritual adviser about it. So we decided to take public transportation, eat in non-airconditioned retaurants and limit our options to just the basics. It didn’t bother me so much except that he asked me to leave my mobile phone behind and use the public phone instead when I needed to make a call! That was tough!

I never thought having a mobile phone was already an essential part of my life! Why? With all the messages, not to mention the calls, one is practically detatched from the rest of the archipelago without a mobile phone in tow. I do agree that cellphones, through texting, have a way of shaping people to an extent more than what we perhaps realize. However we communicate using such tool, with misspelled and garbled words and all, has an effect on the person that we are. Honestly, I sometimes find myself committing errors in spelling!

M: My sister once asked me the spelling of a certain word. Afterwards, she commented that we are becoming a nation of poor spellers and worse, bad communicators. If one cannot communicate effectively, either orally or in writing, we stand to lose our competitiveness in the global arena. Or we simply can misunderstand each other. One true example, there was a guard who saw his supervisor pass by his post and he wrote in his logbook, “The supervisor passed away.” When the supervisor came back, the guard wrote, “The supervisor passed away again”! More than texting, we should also look into our pre-school and elementary education training.

D: Another related question is how many are willing to take on the mission of teaching elementary and high school students. I believe we do have professionals who are competent to teach good English, but how many are willing to do that? But that’s another story for another column. Haha!
The English language used to be just a western symbol. But with the advent of globalization, it’s almost impossible to stay competitive without an English-speaking staff. Some countries like France tried to resist learning the language but eventually they realized they needed to catch up. We should have the advantage since we learned the language early on. It’s just unfortunate some of us want to go backwards by unlearning it.

M: In other countries, they encourage their students to be proficient in English. In ours, there are groups that want Filipino to be the medium of instruction.

D: The English language is cool. This isn’t just a subject we learn in school. It’s the global language of business, unless, of course, our goal is to contain our world in some South American country with an unpronounceable name!

M: People might say it’s just texting—it doesn’t affect the way we write at work when preparing memos or other documents. I beg to disagree. You’d be surprised to read e-mails from executives littered with grammatical errors and correspondences that will make your head spin. Imho (in my humble opinion), f u want 2 improv d way u comunic8, u must make d efort 2 practis evryd so ul ryt bter n spik bter. Wat u tink?!