Online chatters, gaming geekers, cellphone conversationalists, and pretty much anyone under the age of 25 all have one message for people complaining about the destruction of the English language via text speak: KTHXBAI. Rather than being the electronic virus that weakens children’s abilities to learn, read, and spell English words correctly, it’s now seen as more of a dialect of English, or even a second language, one that incorporates symbols as well as letters. While it’s possible that in some cases school papers are turned in with abbreviations found in text messages, rather than properly-spelled English words, as the years go by studies are finding that in general texting has no negative impact on overall literacy.

In fact, as John McWhorter, professor of linguistics at Columbia University, said in a recent talk on the subject, being able to switch between standard English and its more abbreviated form is almost like being bilingual. As many research studies have found, when children are bilingual, they have better overall mental skills. When you look at it in this light, it’s actually a good thing that children – and adults – are using this second “language” to communicate. As McWhorter says, in his experience as a professor, students aren’t handing in test papers filled with words like l8r or 4get or 2day, even though they might be using those abbreviated spellings in the text messages they’re sending out right before they take those tests. This flexibility in language use shows that they’ve got flexible and agile brains, something that will help them academically in any field, not just English.

In addition, he points out, abbreviations and slang have always been part of language, English included. Some words like sonar and AWOL started out as simple acronyms, but are now recognized as standard English words. It’s impossible to say what text speak terms might make it into the OED in the future, but McWhorter and other linguists are now saying that we should look at texting as part of the ongoing evolution of the English language, and not as an aberration that is destroying spelling and vocabulary skills.

You can hear Professor McWhorter’s TED talk on text speak here.

Cross-posted on the Ultimate Spelling blog.