Hey everyone, I didn't want to give this away too early but I found one of the most interesting articles I've ever seen and I just can't help but reveal some of it. I was going to talk about it in class and use it in my project so I'll try not to spoil too much...
You know how people sometimes say "brb" or "btw" out loud? An article by Allen Walker Read gives a TON of accounts of things like this that happened in the 1800s. Just as is happening today, some "experts" were worried that speaking and writing in ridiculous acronyms (even in newspapers and other published documents) was going to be detrimental to the English language. Well, apparently it was mostly just a "craze" and the abbreviations went by the wayside, except for the currently-popular "OK." (OK was an abbreviation of a purposefully/playfully misspelled "all correct" - "oll korrect").
Here are some other 1800's examples according to this author's research:
OFM was very common, standing for "our first men," which was "used in a semisatirical sense:"
- All o.f.m. should make frequent pilgrimages to the o.b.s. during this hot weather. (OBS was the Old Boston Stone - which sold ice cream).
NG:
- They then went together to the plaintiff's to try to settle, but it was n.g. (no go).
SP = small potatoes
GT = gone to Texas
This one required a subsequent printed explanation by the editor: G.t.d.h.d. Supposedly it should have been clear to readers that this stood for "Give the devil his due."
And my personal favorite from the article:
NS = Nuff said. (From the 1800s!!)
So, since most of these widely-used abbreviations eventually died out, maybe using txt language now will not be an everlasting trend for English. But who knows...maybe lol will be the next ok?
Excuses, excuses: why I dread writing
17 years ago
2 comments:
Whoops...here is the citation for that article:
Read, Allen Walker. 1963. The First Stage in the History of "OK." American Speech 38:5-27.
That's really interesting! I have to agree that slang goes in and out. I notice that even my little sister goes through phases of slang. She used to use internet/IM slang quite a bit but has (thankfully) grown out of this (annoying - in my opinion) habit.
And another random thought - in my Dickens English class, we read "Our Mutual Friend" - on of Dickens' less popular works and one of the characters always says "MRF" for "My respected Father." I thought Dickens was using this to be funny (which may have been the case), but according to your article, people may have actually said things like this.
Post a Comment