Two Mass, on Feb 23 2008, 08:17 PM, said:
If this is the direction in which the English language is evolving, I'm worried. I agree with Doughnut's point of view. Even though the purpose of language is to communicate meaning, I reckon we should afford each other enough respect to try to make our messages legible.
Text debate aside, the rest of the world is trying to learn our language and we are busily butchering it to the extent whereby in written form it will soon contain no vowels plus a jumble of mistaken usages of 'their' and 'there' and the made-up 'alot'. In spoken form English will be a series of grunts punctuated by "Basically", "I'm not being funny but" and "like" every three words.
Also, English did not evolve from Latin! Sure, we have borrowed a great many terms from Latin, but English is a Germanic rather than Italic language.