Now, I know how 20 year olds write – bilingually. One ling is “Hahahahahaha!”; the other ling is “LOL”. I didn’t really fancy writing a book where 78% of all words used comprised either hahahaha or LOL.
Having said that, you may have read Matt Beaumont’s brilliant book ‘e’ which is written entirely in e-mails. You might think that this would be tedious or even trivial. In fact, it is one of the funniest and sharpest books I have ever read, and I very rarely rave about books that last more than one hundred pages (other than my own).
After much thought and hesitation, I came to a conclusion – I would write out of the character, not out of the age cohort.
Although 20 year olds may write in a limited vocabulary, they actually speak, in my experience, like the rest of us (except British 20 year olds who may not speak at all). The same is true of lawyers. They speak like the rest of us too, with a few ticks and watch-watchings thrown in. It’s when they write that you realise that they are communicating in jingles beamed across from another dimension. If 20 year olds speak traditionally enough, then hopefully their thoughts are even more congruent with the rest of ours.
Well, all this may not be true, but it was certainly convenient.
However, I am not here merely to talk about my book. I would like to make a more important point. How we all write in our daily lives is changing dramatically.
Ever since the Brits modified the English language and forgot to tell the Americans, and the Americans equally developed the English language and forgot to tell the Brits, the English language has been in a state of ‘superposition’ as it is called in Quantum physics – in two places at once. It only collapses into a stable state in front of participating parties for as long as they are participating (you may know that the Harry Potter series was released in American was well as English because it was felt that English spelling and grammar would be off-putting to Americans).
Over the last twenty years, things have got wilder. English has become the global standard language, which means that everyone now owns it. Germans write German-English to the French who write French-English, which is all commented upon by the Spanish who speak Spanish-English and the Italians who give up entirely and talk among themselves.
If you have ever watched ‘The Wire’, they have to bring in a simultaneous translator to help the audience understand ‘street’ black American English in the projects in Baltimore.
On top of all that, you have electronic English flying out from e-mails and social media sites, of the hahahaha and LOL variety, and SMS texting – R U OK. C U..
If you read a classic English literary novel nowadays, it is beginning to look rather bizarre – all that waffle, complete sentences, languid prose, words only bibliophiles have ever heard of. My bet is that in twenty years time, even legal Jinglish will be more comprehensible than literary English.
Watch out! IMHO. LOL. Love and light!
