Muy bien, Diver Dan. ?Y Tu?

Soy estudiante y primo leccion dos semana mas alla.

Soy espanol es lento y poco.

Tu peguntas facil y dificil ... En espanol!

Hasta luego mi nuevo amigo

I have no problem with new words, new literacies and the evolution of language. I can imagine that many prudish people were put off by Shakespeare's 'corruption' of the language through the invention of new words. He did it a lot!

The problem I have with textspeak is that it destroys the meaning of words, in a sense. I teach my literacy classes to look for word roots when trying to understand the meanings of words. Those word roots are often revealed by obscure spelling and basic letter patterns, all of which are destroyed by textspeak.

If kids are able to use the language of texting as an alternative language pattern, rather than a replacement pattern, then that is fine. We don't mind kids learning Japanese alongside English, as long as they don't forget how to use English. The same applies here. If, however, the new spellings replace the old ones, we have a problem. We could effectively reduce kids' vocabularies which, according to recent studies, reduces their ability to learn.

The focus needs to be the same as it was in the days of shorthand and still is with the phonetic alphabet - text spelling is a useful tool to be used in specific contexts.

By the way, I NEVER use text spelling. I just can't bring myself to do it.

Keith,

Then a comment in English would be fine (I submit to your interest in Spanish: It is a close enough cousin to Latin. May I suggest as you study Spanish, delve into some corresponding Latin. If your interested, I can give you a web site with nine free lessons) .

I would be interested to hear of your comments on any conclusions from my list above; but in keeping with the Spanish theme, particularly the last on the list (Re Spanish overthrow in 2004).

"Dos vedanya Tovarisch!"