Real Evidence Idaho’s Young Have Their Own Language

You can call me a boomer who didn’t get into the program.  However, I’m a believer that Internet abbreviations simply dumb down culture, and it doesn’t need to get any dumber.

Let me add another however.  I have a friend who is in her mid-60s.  She uses a lot of the shorthand when she messages me, and she’s very smart, but she has more kids and grandchildren than I do, and I suspect she had to learn this form of communication to keep up with the family.

Some Have Learned it as a Survival Skill

The other day she explained she had been shopping and was pleased with her haul of BOGO.  I had to look that one up.  Buy one, get one.  As in buy one get one free.

Me, I never got beyond LOL!

  The national search base has some differences, but it’s a long list.  The shorthand has become an entirely new language.

An old managing editor I worked with back in the 90s once agreed with me when I said language was going to regress to grunts.  That was before texting and the Internet became a thing.

Is it Harming the English Language?

For the initiates, and that’s everyone under 45, it’s like they’ve picked up a second language, but is it at the expense of the first?

I guess we can say we do have something we can study.  Government uses abbreviations all the rime.  How’s that working out?

By the way, Idaho's most searched term is PMO.  It stands for put me on.