Text message of the day.

Sun, 4 Sep 2011
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Woke up this morning to this text message that was sent to me at 5:09am:

rmb call me. i scare cannot hear alarm πŸ™‚ thankies

A translation is as follows:

Please remember to give me a call (at the presumably pre-specified time). I’m worried I might not be able to hear the alarm when it goes off. πŸ™‚ Thank you.

I don’t know who this person is as I don’t have her/his number in my phone book.

Nevertheless, I responded, saying:

Hi, just to let you know that you sent your wake-up call request to the wrong number.

This was uncharacteristically un-snarky of me; I wanted to add:

Just in case this has any bearing on whether or not you get any in the future. Cheers.

However, it did occur to me that the recipient might’ve been an ex-student – in which case, it would’ve been hard to explain my humour if I needed to do so – hence my decision to err on the side of caution.

Then again, it could’ve been Jun Liang – to which, coincidentally, it’s three years to the day!

Favourite text message of the day.

Fri, 12 Jun 2009
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Before I go off to sleep, I must share this gem with everyone:

You are in the papers again! BTW I texted this to the wrong person; he called me back in shock.

My response:

Hahaha! He must’ve done something really bad then to have had such a fright.

Context: the message was from a friend whom I’ve known for 12 years, so we know each other’s phone number by heart. He probably typed in the wrong number as he was sending the message. BTW it’s not just the both of us who know each other’s number by heart; all our friends in the same group do the same. That’s the value of a Saint Gabriel’s education for you!

Texting and language acquisition/use.

Tue, 24 Feb 2009
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  1. Your little texting runt may not be illiterate. (via Lucas Ho)
  2. 2b or not 2b: David Crystal on why texting is good for language. (A link I found some time ago)

I’ve always believed we shouldn’t be so quick to decry text messaging and immediately linking the use of abbreviations in texting to language depreciation.

My argument would run somewhere along the lines that the shortened forms of the words are a form of simplification – duh – and code-switching – I won’t use this form of language in formal letters, and people who do that aren’t stupid, they just haven’t been as quick to realise what is appropriate and what isn’t. Or maybe they have different perceptions of appropriateness.

Above all, we must remember that language has evolved over time, and will continue to evolve, regardless of whether you like it or not. The best advice I can give: move along with the times, people.