It was a quiet and peaceful evening and another sunday before my term exams in undergraduation age. As usual I was bumping my head with the syllabus, which I was seeing for the first time and it started looking like some roman and Italian to me (believe me while speaking both the languages sounds like English, but u know the truth.). Got irritated and I went to do my usual business, surfing (chatting) on the net. But things usually come my way. One of our class’s frustoo (the term used to describe first bencher and mugger) is online. This guy started giving me fundaes (English translation of Geeta Poems given by people known as nonsense morons to those people who are not at all interested). And finally he got to know the truth that he’s wasting my time (infact his own) and asked for an adieu. Gladly I marked the confirmation by saying “YO”. I didn’t quite expected any reply, but suddenly our chat window started beeping. I was stunned seeing the reply. Really I didn’t expect that, and for the first time I feel like an Italian talking some nonsense. The reply was “Is it Yes or No”.Then I've discovered one of my greatest downfalls: the invention of urban slang also known as internet shortcuts or showoff language. Ranging from lol, rofl, lmao, omg, wtf, ftw, pwn, to dude, wassup and any variation of the above, these truly destroyed who I am. Really, it created my personality, defining who I am, but utterly trapped me within its grasps in the process. I can't stop using them, in fear of changing who I am in the eyes of others, and the fact that the lack of such items feels wrong, yet the overuse continues to haunt my hindsight on things. Now some reality into facts, the origin of this so called slang.
For a long time slang or 'urban talk' to the uninitated, was a trend started and maintained by a certain class of society. In most cases it would be the youth of the streets that would give birth to new terms for commonly understood priciples, usually to confuse authoritarian figures, and deliver jokes or sinister messages outside the knowledge of the uneducated audience. However, there is a new trend hitting the streets, once scorned the 'foreigner' is now at the forefront of the 'Urban' 'slang' trend.
But we have developed strange instincts of gaining shorter language or so called lingo in our daily life. Right from EOD to describe evening to ASAP to describe now. The rules could possibly change completely within a generation or two. Perhaps the start of sentences would no longer need capitalization, the way the use of commas has decreased over the past few decades. Language changes to Lingo. “LOL! Dude, Playing pranks is all Crappy sleazy stuff.” Difficult to understand right! May be engineering the language had made Yes to Yeah and then to Yo. Perhaps re-engineering came into existence only to set things right. I am still in a dilemma is YO yes or a no?
