W00t! Let's Ruin English...

I was just writing today on Tim's blog my true feelings about l337 speak and netspeak.

Well honestly, after stumbling upon "Merriam-Webster name w00t 2007 Word of the Year - English Teachers Weep," my compliment to society's word banks for keeping netspeak at bay, may just have to be revoked. I find it atrocious that, if letting the word "Woot" into the dictionary, it would be spelled with two zeros. Seriously? w00t?

Methinks not.

Associated Content, referring to l337 or "leet" speak, says "This new language, or jargon, was a way for social semi-outcasts to identify with each other and became the secret handshake of the new millenia." They call l337 speak the pig-latin of the typed, digital age.

Kevin Chen takes a more mild-mannered approach when he says, "The internet is, in one sense, a natural destruction and creation of modern language. It has developed its own lexicon, filled with a multitude of words and acronyms."

Kevin's approach is definitely the way most people look at it. I think those people who classify themselves as independents would prefer to assume this position. True, each age is filled with its influences that alter modern language, yet thinking to historical contexts, change in the English language has taken place relatively slowly over the past several hundred years, compared with the revolution that netspeak and the Internet of today are provoking.

Just because Webster's dictionary has decided to accept w00t as a word, doesn't suggest that other dictionaries will also accept the "word." Personally, I don't foresee the Oxford English Dictionary jumping on the "w00t" bandwagon, at least not with two zeros, any time soon.