ELECTRONIC messaging is throwing the English language into the mincer and spitting out a dish of patois blended from all manner of linguistic cuisines.
The measured era of “Dear Sir” and “good morning” has fallen to “g’day”, “hola”, “easy tiger” and “wassup”. We no longer remain, sir, your most humble and obedient servant; we sign off with “hasta la vista”, “adios”, “catch ya” or “check ya”.
Dinosaurs need to know what we are talking about here: instant messaging over the internet, which is said to be even faster than e-mail. Britons now apparently send 43 million of these speedy billets-doux to each other every day, whether for the purposes of romance, commerce or sheer mindless drivel.
A survey by MSN Messenger, the leading British provider of instant messaging facilities on the web, has found that those who perhaps spend too long in front of their computer screens most commonly greet each other with “hey”, a modernisation of “hi”, first recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1860.
Almost as popular is “yo”, usually associated with West Indian hip-hop culture but first recorded in English literature around 1420. It is certainly older than “hello”, a late 19th-century arrival into the language.
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“Wassup”, a greeting particularly favoured by Scottish messagers, arrived in English in the 1970s straight from Jamaican patois.
Some instant messaging greetings are much more homegrown. It is slightly less than earth-shattering to discover that the commonest greeting on messages emanating from Yorkshire is “aye up”, and on those from the West Midlands “alroyt”.
Currently favoured farewells — and nobody, but nobody, says “farewell” nowadays — are equally eclectic, including “ciao”, “au revoir”, “hasta la vista” and “auf wiedersehen”, not to mention the more homegrown “see ya” and “catch ya”.
Jonathon Green, editor of Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, who conducted the survey among 2,000 users of instant messaging, believes that the technology encourages one of the commonest forms of slang, which is abbreviation. Old sweats from the last war will be well acquainted with “Snafu” (situation normal, all fouled up), and romantic letter-writers of the same era with “Swalk” (sealed with a loving kiss).
“With this form of communication, people are tending to cut it all very fine,” Mr Green said. “You can play with language much more easily when you write it rather than speak it.”
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But will the new globespeak last, and be enshrined in dictionaries? “I wouldn’t put it in my dictionary because it is far too ephemeral, although some mobile phone text-messaging phrases are beginning to creep into the online edition of the Oxford Dictionary,” Mr Green said.
Such use of slang may offend linguistic purists, but at least the instant messengers seem to have abandoned that abomination among farewells, “Have a nice day”. “Catch ya, bro” sounds better, does it not?
Top ten e-words
Hello
Hey
G’day
Hola
Howdy
Yo
Wassup
How goes it
Easy tiger
Wotcha
Awright
Goodbye
Laters
Ciao
Au revoir
Hasta la vista
In a while
Adios
Catch ya
Check you
See ya
Auf wiedersehen
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Endearment
Mate
Love
Sweetheart
Buddy
Pal
Duck
Pet
Geezer
Bro
Chum