A reader writes:
Why do teenagers abbreviate everything? Because, for the most part, they can’t spell. Schools stopped teaching spelling years ago. I am the parent of a near-teenager, and I can say with certainty that while she is certainly the world’s cutest kid, she can’t even correctly spell words that are written on the same page she is writing on. We were horrified in second and third grade when her teachers told us that the school was "de-emphasizing" spelling. I guess the idea is that everyone writes on computers these days, and we all know how infallible spell check is. As good old Trudy Stein would have said where she to have been edumacated in the USA these days, "Their iz no thar there."
Another writes:
There's an interesting twist to this phenomenon in Switzerland.
It has four official languages, with the largest area using German. Yet this applies only to writing – when speaking most use one or another local form of a Swiss-German dialect that is impenetrable even to German speakers. Up to now, it has been purely oral, but Swiss teens are in the process of creating a written language through their texting. At this point it's idiosyncratic and phonetic, but one can foresee that it will gradually become more standardized and form the basis of the first written form of Swiss German.
Another sends the above video:
I love your thread on abbreviations. My favorite show on TV, "Parks and Recreation", spoofed the whole notion of abbreviating.
The Dish 