by Musa Zimunya - New Era - Nambia

WINDHOEK - Teenagers and even some adults have created a new 21st Century language of their own – SMS, to the detriment of English grammar.

The process of spelling words for a friend via cellphone is in itself quite annoying. Of course, for the cellphone, one has to consider the small screen, the number of repetitions when punching in each letter and in general, the need to make the message short and concise.

Limited characters on the cellphone when messaging, or “tweeting”, have exponentially fuelled the trend to shorten words in a bid to save the agony of having to spell out every single word.

This trend has slowly infiltrated high-school classrooms and universities and has even spread to everyone who owns a cellphone or similar communication devices.
For instance: “IYO TXT ng

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Alice Parker - Time Magazine

Ever wonder why we have so many words with multiple meanings? Consider the word “mean,” which can convey hurtful behavior (as in “mean girls”), signify a mathematical middle or indicate intent — as in, what does this word mean?

This verbal mystery has probably not kept you up at night. But linguists have devoted significant brain cells to figuring out why there are so many words that mean more than one thing. Why develop a language, whose main goal should be to promote clear communication, in which confusion is inevitable? Why not just designate one meaning for each word and be done? In fact, multiple meanings seem so contrary to the building of an efficient language that some experts have even argued that perhaps language’s true purpose wasn’t to communicate at all, as we’ve always assumed.

It turns out there’s a method to the language madness; the way we talk is efficient after all. Yes, many of our words have multiple meanings, but for the most part, we aren’t confused by them. That’s because the other important element of language is context.

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Staff reporter - Life Science

When a team of scientists set out to evaluate the emotional significance of English words, they expected most would fall at the center of the scale, at neutral, while equal shares trailed out to the positive and negative ends of the spectrum.

That is not what they found, however: Instead, we appear to speak an optimistically biased language. 

"I think it is a happy story," said study researcher Chris Danforth, an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Vermont. "Fundamentally, we have this happy bias built into our language."

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