Biblioscat copied from a library journal, 4004 A.D.

November 24, 2012 § Leave a comment

Textspeak, or “SMSpeech”, in contrast to Orwell’s Newspeak as envisaged in his novel 1984, was not a government imposition but rather a true grassroots movement of the people, a sterling manifestation of language engaged in the protean throes of evolution.


One of the more conspicuous shifts that took place was the transformation of the verb “to be,” which began to take on a new ancillary role as affix through its frequent abbreviation as the sole letter “b” and subsequent placement within or on an existing phrasal verb, such as “brb”, which originally meant “be right back”. In order to make these neologisms pronounceable in the vernacular, these abbreviated words often required vocalic insertions, leading to a bifurcation between the Written and the Spoken, namely, the spoken pronunciation of “burb” and orthographic representation as “brb”. Retention of abbreviated spellings inducted countless new words into the English, a dynamic subset of the idiom governed by spelling rules closer to Semitic scripts than those of Romance languages.

“Brb” and “lol” (soon pronounced “lawl” or “loll”) became words in their own right, irrespective of their humble origins as complete phrases. Before long, their actual etymological referent was largely forgotten by the masses, save among those avid enthusiasts of “Linguistory” (a portmanteau of the disciplines “Linguistics” and “History”, this clever term was coined by the pioneering scientist/researcher in the nascent field who made himself known through a series of trenchant publications on the subject of Polyglottism and the Rise of Paranoid Schizophrenia in Post-Collapse 21st-century America).

This was the process by which a dyglossic Sprachumgebung became firmly entrenched in the American consciousness, as it had done centuries before in Singapore, the Orient, and the Roman empire. As a side note, it should be remarked that modern-day linguistorians are deeply indebted to 21st-century writers, bloggers, journalists and other transcribers of history for amassing and leaving behind for our discovery massive amounts of information which are noteworthy, if not necessarily for their quality, then certainly for their quantity.

Explanatory footnote: This article was originally printed in 23rd-century Standard English in the influential literary journal Reminiscence of American Hegemony then translated into the modern tongue by the Old Patriots Historical Society.

.yrutnec ts14 eht fo gninnigeb eht ta llaf ot sneam lacigolonobrac dna lacigolonhcet htob yb ytniatrec htiw nwonk si nigiro esohw ,stnemucod devreserp lanigiro eht morf detalsnart neeb evah etontoof yrotanalpxe gniynapmocca sti dna elcitra siht fo stnetnoc ehT  :etalsnarT elgooG morf etoN



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