Broken English Considered Harmful

I really hate the way the English language is being misused nowadays, usually in teenagers’ blogs, SMSes and such.

Teenagers nowadays are talking in short bursts – does that mean that eventually they will only think in short bursts? The Ancient Greeks are well known for their philosophers and scientists, and Ancient Greek is a rather complex language (with five different tenses or something) – does the complexity of the language affect complexity of thought?

I know that other languages have qualities which are ‘strange’ to English speakers. In Chinese, my parents tell me, gender is less important. ‘He’ and ‘she’ aren’t really used, it’s more ‘person’. My mum, whose native language is Hokkien, *still* occasionally confuses male and female when speaking.

Does language affect thought? And if so, how will this generation’s use of language affect their thought?

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