The Majority of People Around the World Text in English

If you’re one of those people who believes English should be the universal language, then I have a tip for you: Grab your cell phone and keep texting!

According to a report we found in The New Yorker, there are more than three billion people on the planet who own cell phones right now and in their race to send about a trillion text messages each year, a majority of people are writing their messages in some form of English. Why? Because it’s faster to type!

For one thing, the average English word is very short – only five letters long. Compare that to the average Inuit word used by the Eskimos, for example, which comes in at 14 letters long. Also, English words use fewer characters – with just 26 letters in our alphabet. By contrast, Ethiopians have more than 300 symbols in their language and the Chinese use literally thousands of written characters! Since those can’t easily be fit onto a cell phone’s keypad, texters are forced to use the English alphabet to tap out their messages. Since brevity is essential in the texting world, a majority of text messages are based on English words.

For example, the French are known to text the English word “now” instead of the French equivalent “maintenant” – because it’s faster to type. The Dutch use “2m” as a short-cut way of saying “tomorrow” – another English word. No matter what language a person speaks, most all texters recognize universal phrases like “brb” for “be right back,” “gr8” for the word “great” or the letter “k” instead of “okay” – again, those are all English words!

Of course, some purists believe all the shorthand phrases used in texting are an abomination of the English language. That’s a short-sighted view, according to texting expert David Crystal because from a cultural standpoint, he believes those abbreviations have helped spread English around the world faster than any technology in history. In other words, it doesn’t matter if a person in Slovakia types “lol” or “laugh out loud” into their cell phone. Either way, they’re still using English.

MICHELLE

michelle_desalva@yahoo.com

The New Yorker