The Sad Demise of Literacy

We have all experienced it. The songs these days, especially Rap lyrics, are full of it. Tweets almost require it. I am talking about the blatant display of illiteracy plaguing our media and our lives.

Here is an actual text message from a facebook post someone sent. It is from a young, presumably pregnant, woman. I have transcribed the message verbatim with only a single change for the profanity:

When you pregnant everybody wanna be auntie and god mama everybody promise to come to the baby shower…

Lol wait till yo baby shower see how many come.. They gone say "can I bring yo gift another day honey" promise you all kind of [****]. they not gone bring no gift baby! And once the baby born they gone disappear and comment on yo pics like "aww look at my baby"

If you can understand the message she is trying to convey, please translate it to English and send it to me.

This appears to be from a person old enough to be, or a contemporary of someone old enough to be, pregnant. Maybe she dropped out of school at an early age – like maybe 10 years old! I would certainly like to think that was the case, and not that our schools could be turning out students with such atrocious language skill.

Language is believed to have originated in the early Neolithic period as societies emerged. It was necessary to convey ideas and concepts to others in the tribe, or band of people. It is also thought that the first utterances were merely a limited set of guttural sounds. Over time, and out of necessity, those sounds were refined into a coherent language capable of communicating concepts and commands to everyone familiar with the language.

It didn’t happen overnight and it was very likely a struggle to get everyone in the community in harmony with the subtleties of the language. As it evolved and people began to meet with those of other communities with a different language, the languages became refined into more broadly accepted vocabulary, grammar, and style.

Eventually, the language took a more permanent form and writing was born. Even here, great care was taken to standardize in order to gain a wide understanding of what was being communicated.

The United States of America was founded using the English language for all legal matters. The Declaration of Independence, US Constitution, and every amendment was written in the plain English language of that time. This, in itself, was nothing short of a minor miracle, since most Americans at the time were only partially literate and many were totally illiterate. Also, notice that these founding documents are all written in what today is called cursive – sadly, a form disappearing from our schools.

Okay, I will spare you the full lesson on the history of language and writing. It should suffice to know that humanity struggled for a very long time to attain the grammatical standards and lexicon of the English language in order to communicate precise and concise ideas with others who understand that language.

When this form is not used, the originator might just as well be speaking Swahili or some South American tribal language. You will not get many who will understand what you are trying to say or the concept you would like to convey. And this is a shame since the originator may be struggling to say something important.

If you can read and understand this column, thank my English teachers. If you are grateful I have not written it in Twitter gibberish, you can thank me for never learning how to text.