L33t Sp3@k - Retarded language or inevitable evolution?

[DezoPenguin]

You're not the only one, psyco; I correct the secretaries in our office on affect/effect in one of my letters pretty much weekly (don't even get me started on "pay off" vs. "payoff"...). It's just one of those things...

As for 1337-speak, I'd personally consider it the slang or jargon of a particular social group--and, as Sonic# put it, it's not so much a change in the language as a change in the way the letters are written.

That's different, btw, from text messaging/internet abbreviatons like, well, "btw"--if you get right down to it, abbreviations have been with us forever and a day, and it's just that real-time text communication--and even moreso, text communication in a limited field of available message length--gives rise to the use of excessive abbreviation. Heck, in the 19th century the exact same thing was occurring in the use of telegrams, and it didn't make the language as a whole evolve towards the excessive use of abbreviations.

Language does evolve, and technology does help trends disseminate more rapidly among people, but I think that the perception that a change is occurring spreads much faster than any actual change, and very often false rumors and concepts get out there without anything to support them.