Monday, January 11, 2010

Words. Who Needs 'Em?

Teenagers 'only use 800 different words a day' - Telegraph: "A generation of teenagers who communicate via the Internet and by text messages are risking unemployment because their daily vocabulary consists of just 800 words, the Government's new children's communication tsar has warned.

Although, according to recent surveys, they know an average of 40,000 words, they tend to favour a 'teenspeak' used in text messages, on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and in internet chat rooms like MSN.

One poll, commissioned by Tesco, revealed that while children had the vocabulary to be articulate, the top 20 words they used - including the Vicky Pollard lexicon of “yeah”, “no” and “but” - accounted for about a third of all the words they used."

4 comments:

Deb said...

Don't forget "like" and "ya know."

Richard Robinson said...

"actually" may be a heavy hitter too.

Jerry House said...

I may be a crotchety old man, but it seems like there are a lot more "um"s and "er"s than when I was a teenager. Of course, when I was a teenage no words came out of my mouth, only drool when a pretty girl walked by.

Cap'n Bob said...

Gnarly, dude.