i have a love for words, grammar, spelling, & how they look. i find myself getting almost angry when i see them being abused a 'friend' posted on facebook "EEEEE, 38 DAYZ TIL XMAS, CNT W8 =]" & upon reading, i shut my laptop. the craze with 'urban dictionary' infuriates me! your opinions? can you put up with said awful language?
It's here to stay and there is not a lot you can do about it, unfortunately. It's bound to creep into daily use more and more.Get used to it!
Let's get a gang together, with some torches and pitchforks, and lynch anyone who uses all capitals, text speak or splits an infinitive! Seriously, you just have to live with it. If people sound like idiots on facebook, so what? They're only making themselves look stupid. Use proper spelling, punctuation and grammar yourself, and maybe people will notice that you're coherent and don't come across like a monkey beating its head against the keyboard.
yeah, i pretty much gather that it's here to stay. i sometimes don't reply to people when they text me a whole sentence in abbreviations ;o it's lazy as well as ugly. i like your pitchfork idea, Banzai... i can adapt to that!
Language is a living thing and not set in stone, personally I've found as many witty usages of words in the Urban Dictionary as I've found cringe worthy ones.
Just another reason to stay away from these 'social networks' IMHO. Had a friend of mine email me with that crap - told her when she remembered how to speak English, let me know. Never got another incoherent mess from her again (ie, Yay! She's literate once more)
^ Agreed. Illiteracy's bound to creep back into society, for better or for worse. I hate seeing emails with slang in them, and if I had a penny for every slang term used on facebook alone, I could be richer than Zuckenberg himself. It's just a lack of discipline as I see it. People aren't being taught that you should always use the full word, but are instead being told that they can get away with slang such as "lol," "brb," et cetera. It's more than urban dictionary, to be sure. It's just simple bandwagon. Whatever is easiest for society is what's used. I'm proud to say I complete all of my words, even in texts, and I still walk to and from work and school every day. Granted, I don't have a license, but this way nobody can call me a slacker or slouch.
What does "EEEEE, 38 DAYZ TIL XMAS, CNT W8 =]" have to do with urban dictionary? UD is a compendium of slang terms, not just so-called netspeak. Okay, I know those kinds of abbreviations are in there, but if they weren't, what help would UD be? I get what you're saying, but don't go blaming urban dictionary. Also, slang rocks. Those who disagree can go EABOD.
I don't think it makes sense to think of it as some kind of illiteracy. They're still communicating as much information as they would be if they wrote like this; I'd even venture that they're communicating far more efficiently. If you really think about it "EEEEE, 38 DAYZ TIL XMAS, CNT W8 =]" gives a great deal of information about not only what the speaker wants to say, but their mood, the tone of the sentence, the wider context of the utterance. It would take much more effort to do that in "proper" English, and probably wouldn't be as evocative anyway. It's easy to deride it as lazy, just like it's easy to deride factory workers as lazy because they use machines to do work for them. It's just a more efficient way to get the job done. Obviously, it's not appropriate in all places, but for quick communications, it's a great tool. Take the humble 'lol' for instance; it technically means laughing out loud, but it almost never means exactly that. Instead, it's become a very sophisticated word that can completely alter how a sentence is read and understood in hundreds of different ways depending on the context of its use. There really is nothing like it in the English language in terms of its semantic sophistication. Anyone who thinks it's just matter of laziness, I would venture, has never really bothered to think about the actual linguistic function these new words have.
I agree, I go out of my way to use proper grammar and spelling every time I type something. Especially on facebook. For this very same reason. Also, this is why English is one of the hardest to learn languages. There is an ever evolving slang.
I salute you. My pitchfork is at the ready, and I will join the masses for our rebellion....Grammar freaks, unite!
I have never enjoyed Urban Dictionary. It's pretty become a house for trolls who just want to post random things for the lolz of it. I've seen a lot of things about Autism that I really didn't enjoy either, among other things such as some weird ones that shouldn't even exist like: "Disability 18 up, 13 down A persons ability to dis. Dis-ability Disability Guy 1: "Dude, that (yellow) shirt looks like a bee crapped all over it." Guy 2: "Seriously, that's all you could come up with?! You really need to work on your disability man." But here is one for Autism that I am so appalled over: "Autistic 1 up, 1 down Something the game "Minecraft" causes. See Minecraft (In the example, you can plainly see that I'm addicted to Minecraft ) Person 1: Hey, want to go and play basketball? Person 2: Nah, I'm playing Minecraft. Person 1: Ok... But you need to get outside. You are being Autistic. Person 2: I'm... Playing... MINECRAAAAFFTTTT!!!!!!! *rageface*" Those are just some of the things that have gotten on my nerves. It's like they have no shame in what they say...
I think it's kind of cool how we have a whole "urban language" founded on these notions and expressions. It's another way of appealing to the atypical reader, who might not be so familiar with books.
urban is just a creation of some saddo who has nothing better to do then abuse or try to incriminate a langauge they obviously they can't handle. it is obviously good to know it is there, being aware of it is all thebetter for you, and so the only way to better it ,is to keep using those appropriately and invent your own 'burban dictionary to reclaim those words back' there is nothing to stop you. in fact in a site like this one may start the 'perfecting dictionary' where youcould invent new words and store them there, and also pick up those words from the urban and perfect them/claim them back into this dictionary.
i don't see how that can be called 'urban' since even kids/folks way out in the sticks have cellphones and other emailing/texting devices nowadays, upon which they inflict such abominations on their friends and family... i'd love to see the results of a study done on schoolchildren to see how texting and e-chatting has affected their spelling grades!
I have to admit I have a terrible time reading and understand much of the new cell phone slang. But everyone uses it at least a little, IMO. The first time I saw IMO I went around for days thinking, what on earth does IMO mean? I asked my son. He said, "Lull. In My Opinion." Then it took me another month to figure out that "Lull" was the pronouced version of lol. I consider it learning a new language. Not that I really love it but occasionally it works even for us hater. Cause I have a pitchfork too but since my sons would be the first to be impaled I'm trying to at least understand it.
Urban Dictionary refers to a lot of other made up things and not just the text message stuff. It is actually an online "dictionary" of slang if you didn't know. http://www.urbandictionary.com/
But is it really? I've looked at stuff in there and it seems quite a bit of it is just random people sending in things) - and many times other random people arguing about it. I've gotten to the point of just skipping over any search results that include UD, since so much of what comes up is contradicted either elsewhere or within UD itself.
The reason it has conflicting definitions is because slang differs from state to state and even city to city. That is why each word or phrase has multiple definitions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Dictionary
I don't think there's anything wrong with it so long as people don't think it's acceptable for actual writing. And there's nothing wrong with slang. Slang words are just words that haven't got into the dictionary yet, which is how all words started out. Slang is progress.
So unless the contributor specifies where his/her particular definition is used - and many I've looked at don't - it's still pretty much worthless. Better to stick with slang that's 'universally understood', imho.
That is the thing, it is universally understood by young people and internet frequenters. That website was not made for older and more mature people. It is literally a collection of slang made up by the young people of the world. But that is not to say that there is not "real" widely known slang on there, because it does have that as well. So what I am saying is, the website needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Should you use that website to find hard facts? No. Should you use that website to see what kids are saying these days? Yes.
Definitely used with a grain of salt. But even then, you can't make much use of it to see what kids are saying - because what they're saying in Boston may not make any sense to the kids in Denver. Which is why I say it's of very little value overall.
