Language is, always has been, and always will be, constantly changing. A little like technology. But when it seems technology is advancing so quickly, does language adapt itself at the same speed?

I remember way back when in 200*cough cough* and I was the proud owner of a Nokia 3210. The shops were overloaded with the likes of “A Dummie’s Guide To Text Talk” and “C U l8r: How 2 Txt”. I totally made those titles up, but you get the idea. We wanted, nay, needed, to know how to talk to each other wth shrt wrds 2 sy mre + py less 4 txts. And, inevitably, before long, teachers, parents and everyone else over the age of 25 was blaming texting for corrupting the spelling of the youth. Corrupting or changing? Well, that’s a debate that can be had another day.

Point is, texting changing language, dramatically. Round about the same time as texting, e-mail reared it’s head in a big way, which also contributed its fair share to language change. Both of them paving the way to a future (currently a now) with more people reading and writing than ever before, but not in the traditional sense. 😉 Ooo, see how that winky smiley just make that sentence sound flirty? I’m not flirting with you, I promise. 😉

So then with texting and emailing, these punctuation aided smiles began emerging. Expressing emotion, earning themselves the title of emoticons. When you write, it suddenly becomes easier to tell your reader how you want things to be read. 🙁 Now you think that I think that’s a bad thing, right? Just because I put a little sad face. Or a colon and a bracket depending on which way you look at it.

And you can put your own personal twist on this! Do you give your smileys a nose? :- ) A square mouth? :] Or a non-head-tipping ‘meh’ quality? ‘__’

Another thing that strikes me as being super personal is the way we laugh in writing. Lol. Rofl. Haha. Hehe. LOL. Roflcopter. Bahaha. Just to name a few I’m sure. Then to contrast, we have the super personal ways we interpret it when people say them. I’ll give you a little example, my granddad always ends a text with “LOL gdad xx”. Is he laughing out loud in a demonic Bond villain kind of way before completing his message or chuckling before signing off? Well, no actually. Turns out he means ‘Lots Of Love”.

So you see, it’s a minefield of abbreviations, three letter acronyms, and emoticons out there. But laughter is the one that really gets me. Do you think we can express laughter through writing? Can we write laughter? Do different ways of writing laughter come across as sarcastic? Now, I don’t know the answer to this, or even if there is one. Also, if English isn’t your first language, how do you express laughter in your native language? I’d love to get your opinions – what do you think? Lol. Just kidding. 😉 Now I’m flirting. 😮 Now I’m shocked. Ok, I’ll stop now. Over to you!