Txting not gr8 4 teens use of lngwij

You can take an adult education course at Hutt Valley High School in text messaging. Picture / Martin Sykes

Is the popularity of text language a sign the English language is in decline? Is text language turning teenagers into mutants who cannot distinguish between words and texting code? Why do teenagers treat their mobile phones like a life-support system?

There is no doubt that people, in particular teenagers, have taken to texting in the past few years with an addictive, feverish passion.

The English language has been chopped up, shortened and squeezed to fit into the mobile phone, and grammar, spelling and punctuation have been made largely redundant in the texting world. But does that matter?

While some people may staunchly uphold the rules of the language and text using punctuation, teenagers have a tongue of their own - which is quickly being picked up by other age groups.

Community educator Claire Farrell and her daughters Hannah, 16, and Katie, 15, run "text like a teen" classes at part of the adult education programme at Hutt Valley High School. They started the classes in February this year.

For the first class, they invited their grandparents along, who invited a few friends. They had a ball.

Many elderly people came not knowing anything about mobile phones, but wanting to connect with their grandchildren by text.

"One woman came along, and her mobile, which was on silent and vibrate, started to ring. She threw it across the room because she thought it was going to blow up. That just made everyone laugh and feel more relaxed about the whole thing," Farrell said.

The classes gained in popularity fast and are now booked out - most people in the Hutt Valley know about them. Even the BBC World Service has reported on the classes.

The Farrells' idea has also been picked up by Senior Net, a community-based organisation that teaches technology to elderly people. Senior Net, sponsored by Telecom, started running texting classes around the country at the end of April.

Farrell said most who come to the Hutt Valley High school classes were in the 30 to 40 age bracket, or over 70.

"It is split between the people who have had a phone for a while and want to know the language and elderly people."

Farrell said it was surprising how quickly the elderly people in the class picked up the texting language.

"Many of them came along with no preconceptions and caught on quickly. We often get many texts from people as they leave the class, with smiley faces and thankyous," Farrell said.

The Farrells divide the class into Vodafone and Telecom users and run through the basics of text language.

"We don't do any tests or anything. It is all fun, but I do take along a whiteboard and write out a sentence in texting language then get them to decipher it," Farrell said.

The classes showed how much texting is infiltrating the English language, Farrell said.

She believed that most teenagers have a good awareness of language and can decipher between texting and proper English and would not include it in essays. But she also questioned whether the generation born now would have the same consciousness.

A teacher from Havelock North High School in Hawkes Bay, who has been teaching English for 30 years, and worked with reasonably able teenagers, said some students used text language in their essays.

"I think that people with a reasonable grasp of English don't have trouble with the idea that you change writing for different situations, so text language is for texting. So they need to be aware writers. But those with a less firm grasp on standard written English may be more inclined to apply text language to writing, because they cannot really distinguish purpose, audience and appropriateness."

She said texting was contributing to the demise of written English standards, but it was not the only factor. Teenagers were far more visually orientated and had short attention spans.

"Texting is like a stone in the pond, but there are other circles," she said.

Spell-checking functions are becoming more widely available on mobile handsets known as personal digital assistants, but there are questions around whether grammar applications will become available on the devices, according to Telecom.

Telecom spokeswoman Sarah Berry said most people used predictive text, which had a built-in spelling and grammar function already.

Auckland university digital commerce senior lecturer Dr Robert Davis said telecommunication and mobile phone companies never expected text messaging to be a killer application.

"It was just a service that was loaded on the phones. Users of the phone started to use it quite spontaneously," he said.

He said it had gained in popularity because consumers had adapted the language to communicate to friends and family.

Also, text messaging was a form of indirect communication that had allowed people to respond directly to someone - but hide in the shadows.

"I think that is why some people break up using text messaging. It is a hidden way to deal with an issue that should be dealt with face to face. Text messaging is also a great way to flirt without exposing oneself."

In New Zealand the service was introduced when the first text-capable mobile phone, the Nokia 2110, became available in December, 1994.