Have you ever known someone who can't send a coherent text message to save their lives?

Yes. My brother-in-law. To be fair, English is his third language. It’s really funny though. He’ll text to me:

”Hy brth nlaw!!! Hws it gn tdy. Tk 2 u soun”

^^^ I understood that!

I hv no id wht u tlkn abt. ~

LOL! It’s not like that! It’s not like she abbreviates. It’s….just random stuff. Like, you’ll ask her something and she’ll send back an answer that makes absolutely NO sense in the context of what you asked. I don’t know if it’s the restrictions of texting that causes it or if that’s the way she is.

I think you have to define what coherent means. What is coherent to a 14 year old is gibberish to me. And vice versa.

I think that the key pointy of evaluation is not the language used (txtspeak) but whether the recipient understood it.

And of course the antidote to incoherence is simple: you send a message in return saying “your message was garbled – can you resend it?”

@Dutchess_III Yes, I love pancakes.

She’s my age. She doesn’t do txtspk @elbanditoroso

@SavoirFaire So, whet time?

I’d say don’t blame the medium, just figure she can’t put together a coherent thought. Some people are not very good at expressing themselves.

@Dutchess_III In the frizzer.

I have an English teacher who is an American. We text sometimes. She uses txtspk and I don’t because I’m not familiar with English txtspk, though I can still understand what she writes.

That’s English. I can use txtspk quite well using my mother tongue and most can understand my writing (though I don’t use txtspk unless I’m texting).

I have a friend who love texting and she use txtspk frequently. Sometimes to the point she can’t be understood. Once she borrowed my cell phone and texted another friends of mine to inform her about some changes (using her normal texting style of course). I ended up receiving the message: “What the hell are you talking about Mimishu?”

My mom. Bad txtspk combined with sheer randomness.

That describes me perfectly. I couldn’t send a text message if my life depended upon it. Seriously.

Its not a coherent message that I have trouble with. But I don’t have the vaguest notion how to get it to the proper recipient.

An email I know how to do. That system of addresses makes sense. I can make a phone call because the format of area code plus number makes sense.

But from what I can tell, text messages are sent by means of some combination of numbers representing what I don’t know.

I can write a text. But how on earth I would actually SEND it to Dutchess (or anybody else) remains a mystery to me. The entire system is a mystery.

Plus, the only reason I could ever think of where a text message would be better than a phone call would be if I were being held in a group of hostages in a bank robbery and dare not speak :)

If I need to communicate with anyone else, I pick up the phone and call.

And its a WHOLE LOT FASTER than typing out a text message. I just don’t get why texting has apparently replaced phone calls.

And especially now that most cell plans charge the same regardless of distance there are no more expensive long distance phone calls as they were in the past.

Why bother typing when speaking is so much easier ?

Yes. I hate it.

Haha my roommate’s aunt sends her text messages…that come on our landline phone. So it rings, you pick it up, and a voice generator reads out the message that was sent. It sounds like gnomes fucking muppets. You can’t understand a thing and it speaks really fast, so my roomie phoned her aunt and asked her to just phone her, and not send those texts anymore. But the aunt thought the messages came on my roomate’s TV screen.
(I know this can actually happen if you have a smart TV but I’ll be damned if i know how to do it. Ain’t even got no phone myself. GOOD too, I hate people calling me. Leave me alone.)

@Buttonstc “I just don’t get why texting has apparently replaced phone calls.”

With texts, it is up to the recipient when to reply. Many people like that. Also, the record of what was said can prove handy later.

As to calling being so much faster: It takes practice, but texting is incredibly fast if both parties are used to it.

Lastly, there’s the people who don’t like speaking on the phone…I’m one of them.

”It sounds like gnomes fucking muppets.”

Fluther quote of the week.

@Buttonstc Because if you have one simple question, and don’t want to get hung up on the etiquette surrounding conversation it’s actually faster to text.

Text: R u coming next week?
Response: Ya.

Conversation: Ring ring, ring ring, ring ring “Hello?”
“Hi! This is Val”
“Oh hi! How are you?”
“I’m good, how are you?”
“I’m OK. Broke my leg yesterday but it’ll be OK.”
“Well, that’s a bummer. What happened?”
Long explanaton of what happened, the hospital visit, what they said and did…
“Well, that sounds painful! Hey..I was wondering if you’re coming next week?”
“Plan too! Sounds like fun! Who all is going to be there?”
And so on.

Plus it’s not always easy to get to the phone to answer it.

^ Plus, I can’t stand the sound of some people’s voice.