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Confused or Confuzed?

It's Ok to be Creative so long as the lines between Creative and Real are not Blurred!

But when do you realize how much is too much?

One night, while traveling in Mumbai's city bus, I was looking out of the window, absorbing the sights under the moonlit sky.  Even though it was close to midnight, the road was well lit- partly by the street lights and partly by the lights emanating from residential buildings and commercial set ups lining the road.

I soon noticed a high rise, sitting on top of which, was the spelling 'Arkade'. This got me thinking about the kind of spellings the next generation will grow up with.

Now are the times when cool isn't kool enough and abbreviations like ttyl and brb are the norm. the spill over from Twitter's 140 character limit is felt in real life as well. Every word and every sentence needs to be reduced to its lowest denominator.  


Creativity is now seeming to blur the lines between what's considered correct and incorrect in language. Design is spelled in at least 3 different ways- Dezine, D'sign and even Des'eye'ne!

I wonder what a challenge it must be for a little child today to learn spellings. How can we blame a student, accustomed to the SMS lingo, to write gr8 for great in an examination!

A tough challenge lies ahead for parents and teachers . But more importantly, for all the young kids who learn one thing in the classroom and witness quite another in the world outside. Especially the new trend of handing mobile phones to toddlers as young as 1 year old, will obviously lead to great difficulties for the child in differentiating between sms lingos, twitter-esque sentences and textbook rules of English grammar.

I wonder how would a little one living in that Arkade building would react when the teacher would insist that it isn't spelled as Arkade after all! Nevertheless, it may only be wise for us to be prepared for many new abbreviations and lingos creeping into the English language and becoming commonplace very soon.

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