[smokingfrog]

The Catherine Tate Show - BBC comedy video

[max americana]

>’We need to help today’s teenagers understand the difference between their textspeak and the formal language they need to succeed in life — 800 words will not get you a job.’

As long as you have a teleprompter, you only need 3: Hope and Change’.

[the OlLine Rebel]

Sad, but not shocking.

We have been obsessed with those damn phones and computers (only in the last couple years “texting” - I cringe at that “word”).

Why we allow children to regularly have these devices I do not know. I do not think my son should even be allowed to carry them around every day, much less “own” 1.

[GeronL]

Unemployable?

Ha, that is funny. The welfare state will take care of them.

[La Lydia]

“Am I bovvered?”

[Blue Collar Christian]

I’m all like totally whatever!

[stormer]

[magritte]

Prolly. OMG! SWL! SYS.

[Signalman]

All these dumb kids will become adults, get on the welfare rolls and they’ll be a big future constituency for the Dems. And we’ll be supporting these losers. Not a problem for them. A big problem for the country.

[matt1234]

Mo gubmint is de way fo sho.

[Ditto]

Today Jean Gross, who advises the Government on children's speech, said urgent action was required to prevent children failing to find jobs because they are unable to communicate.

I stopped in a local Pub the other day and a 20-something was there whose vocabulary seemed limited to using the f-word at least twice in each 'sentence.'

[Glenn]

Doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the latest fad of people who want to seem smart beginning every paragraph with, “So,”.

[Doohickey]

OMG!

[Huck]

Teenagers talking and acting like dopes?? I don’t believe it!

[LibFreeOrDie]

[stephenjohnbanker]

LOL!

[jiggyboy]

Orwell nails it again, sixty years ago:

“Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it is described as being “the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year”....Newspeak is closely based on English but has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar. This suits the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim is to make any alternative thinking—”thoughtcrime”, or “crimethink” in the newest edition of Newspeak—impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

[rlmorel]

Heck, you only need a vocabulary of err...uhhh...eehh...ahhh and you can be a liberal president.

[don-o]

to read

[mylife]

[Secret Agent Man]

Funny, the words “I’m sorry”, “I was wrong” and “Thank you” don’t seem to be in that 800 word list.