TEXT YOUR MIND

$Pe@K uR w3IrI) WuRlI)

Good day to all of you. Now, would you care to greet me "good day" too? Yes, and in the polite way too, if you must. Oh, you can't do it? Is it because you'd rather text me "gUd Pm!" by way of your cellular phone, or drop me a friendly twit via Twitter or an offline PM through Yahoo Messenger? How sad! You sad little thing. You must have forgotten the fringe benefits of going through the personal exchange of greeting in your relationships (besides passing English IV).

Admit it. The English and Filipino vernaculars are becoming ugly barnacles. Enough words have been "coined" today to even say in the least that they are worth a coin to hear. To add insult to injury, more and more of these words are used by teenagers today as part of their language. What happened to the days when a "Good morning!" earned you a show of praise from everyone around you? Lately, it's quite the fad to twist "Good" to "gUd", "I have to leave" to "gtg" or "go na meh", or even "I adore you" to "I luv u! mwah mwah!" Indeed, these greetings have become a sign of the times, and if you are part of "the times," den u'd $1mPli B cA$t oWt 4 n0t F1t1ng n.

On one side of the coin, you can be sure that push-button greetings will save you time and money. Should bookshops ever run a shortage of fancy old English greeting cards, you have your cellular phone to compensate for things. If text-based greeting cards aren't your kind of dish, then you can always send a mushy-mushy e-card to your sweetie. Sure, the benefits may seem healthy for your wallet, but will anybody really appreciate it that much if all you did all year was to send "haP1 b-dAy! Luv ya! Mwah mwah! Xoxo (insert name here)"?

On the flip side, the teenagers prefer to think that as the world works the calendar with technology, shortcut methods of doing possibly anything becomes more and more recommendable. The case at hand holds a lot of water because of this. Any Filipino teen would think it is "jologs" not to use a cell phone or an online messaging application to greet someone these days, and they consider it even more "bukitit" to use formal language alone to do it. What they miss is the point that personal exchange and suitable language ability without any means of technology gives them more credit. For instance, going to the house of a friend and greeting her a "Happy birthday!" formally instead of button-pushing the greeting will be more appreciated. It may look more taxing but the personal exchange and suitable language ability are there. "Textspeak", twitspeak" and "chatspeak" may be popular with Filipino teenagers today, but I tell you, you'll regret the day you've mangled your last English phrase now most especially that some of you failed in English IV.

What do these signs of the times aim to show? That the present Filipino youth is becoming more "hip" with the kind of language they set for themselves? The fact that we make even hacker language slowly look more understandable besides human speech is also embarrassing. Language and, all the more, our ability of human speech can't be bought off any sari-sari store. Why murder it then? Filipino and English are the key ingredients in the melting pot of cultures of the country; ergo, they must be preserved for the use of future generations. Consider all these the next time you press that "send" button on your Nokia/Sony Ericsson/Samsung phone or one of your AIM/YM/MSN chat window.

Greet with a touch of formality, and do so with a touch of finger too less often. You'll be happy to know then that you've saved yourself from the subtle maneuver of the machines that are slowly replacing you. Or maybe the next time you will receive the report card, you pass English IV already.