The Sad Truth about Feline Grammar

Sir Edward Gobswain, professor of Zoological Linguistics at Oxford University, has just published a damning new report in Animal Language. The paper, based on extensive studies in the past few years, outlines a dramatic drop in the quality of feline grammar, both written and spoken. Sir Edward concludes that this could lead to tragic consequences for all animal language in the future.

Gobswain’s paper, The Sad Truth about Feline Grammar, begins with a history of cat language, and the developments noted in this essential field. Carroll’s 1865 paper on the Cheshire breed of Cat showed a feline creature with a remarkable linguistic ability, while Lloyd-Webber (1981) noted the ability of various cats to sing, as well as talk, with great grammatical ability. Sadly, somewhere down the line, this ability seems to have abandoned the domestic feline.

The decline in linguistic excellence seems to have started around 2005. This is the point when, Gobswain notes, “a terrible disease began to affect cats everywhere, and their ability to vocalise internal feelings became stunted and infantile.”

Whereas the cat mentioned by Carroll in the 19th Century was able to engage in philosophical debate, nowadays cats seem to have trouble formulating simple sentences. Verb tensing, question phrasing and verb/pronoun agreement are now almost alien to the feline race. Phrases such as “…can has…” and “I is…” are now the rule rather than the exception. When asking questions, many cats will now utter a statement with a rising intonation instead of a properly-phrased question statement. And in written English, cats now seem completely unable to spell even the simplest words, like ‘is,’ ‘your’ and ‘itty bitty kitty committee’.

This is all depressing stuff, and Sir Edward warns that this linguistic failure may even be crossing over into the rest of the animal kingdom. Dogs, mice, owls and even walruses have shown signs of this grammatical disease.

As for explanations of this worrisome trend, Professor Gobswain can only theorise. His most fruitful line of inquiry shows a correlation between the deterioration of cats’ language and their diet. In the past few years many cats have moved away from the more traditional feline foods to junk food, such as cheeseburgers. The levels of nutrients in a cheeseburger are not enough for a growing kitten, and so it could be that cats’ collective brain power is falling as their diet gets worse. More studies are certainly needed, though, as the changes in both diet and linguistic capabilities could be symptoms of a greater underlying cause. It’s a long-shot but maybe, Gobswain hypothesises, Basement Cat is somehow responsible.

Whatever is to blame for this terrible blight on zoological communication, Gobswain concludes that things will get worse before they get better. Many pet owners are reluctant to correct their cats’ linguistic failures, and some even encourage them, believing them to be ‘cute’. Sir Edward warns that “giving your cat a cheeseburger when he says ‘I can haz cheezburger?’ will not wean them off this behaviour. On the contrary, it will reinforce it. Like children, we must reward good behaviour and punish the bad. I recommend pet owners withhold all burger products from their cats until the animals can ask for the food correctly. Doing otherwise would constitute what I refer to as ‘pet ownership FAIL’”.

To conclude the review, this is a worrying report of a trend that looks unlikely to improve soon. With more publicity, however, we might be able to roll back some of the damage through education and more public spending in feline literacy education. Sir Edward is to be commended for his fine work and dedicated study.

The Imaginary Reviewer is in your noun, verbing your related noun.

Nonsense Blast

The latest craze that’s grabbing the earlobes of today’s youth and kneeing them in the crotch is ‘Freeform Texting’, otherwise known as ‘Nonsense Blast’. It involves sending a normal SMS text message to a friend or loved one, but instead of typing out letters to make words and sentences, the person uses their mobile phone to create a string of random letters and symbols. Thus, a text message that is supposed to say ‘Hi Dave, pub @ 8? Ste’ might say ‘yaawkswt f3c@ 33pfpaamn’.

The person credited with the creation of this revolution is Philip Stirrup, a 19-year-old student from Tarby.

‘I was on the train, texting my girlfriend to let her know I was going to be late,’ says Stirrup of his moment of creation. ‘As I was tapping out the letters I kept thinking, “I don’t want to type this letter, I want to type something else.” So that’s what I did. The text ended up saying ‘Hey Jules, I’nnnn a gam majgd 00.’

From these seeds of jibberish and a held-up girlfriend, a phenomenon was created. Soon, the word spread of Nonsense Blast, and text messages everywhere started getting silly. Estimates currently place the amount of nonsense texts at around 20% of all text messages sent in Britain, and that percentage is set to grow.

‘It really is a brilliant idea,’ says Bobby Grotnik, Professor of Linguistics and Stargate SG1 at Durham University. ‘These young people are escaping the confines of their own language, even relinquishing the bonds of the slang that they’ve created! By refusing to follow the rules of spelling, grammar or even simple semantic meaning, they’re allowing us all to break free from the oppressive rule of language, flying free from prison to gahdfm ….safdsfdhurrrrrrrrr’ At this point our email interview is halted as Professor Grotnik starts to freeform type in order to prove his point.

But not everyone is as pleased at this new linguistic revolution. Parents who already found their children’s language difficult to understand are now up in arms because their offspring are now sending completely impenetrable messages. Molly Oldenstock of Parents Against Nonsense Texting (PANT) says that her group are petitioning mobile phone companies to make them stop sending texts that are incomprehensible. So far the group has met with little luck.

‘We are sick and tired of sending our children messages asking where they are and getting a load of random letters as a response,’ Oldenstock yelled at me down the phone. ‘We want our kids to send proper messages that make sense. Now, the phone companies tell us that they can’t prevent people sending messages that don’t make sense because a few French people here and there might not get their texts. But we know why they don’t want to do it; it’s all about the money. Well, as parents we’re not going to take it any longer!’

Oldenstock went on. ‘I don’t care what the eggheads say about Lewis Carroll and James Joyce inventing their own language and escaping from the restrictivities of accepted usage! They still followed semantic and syntactic systematization!’ At this point Molly banged her hand on the table for effect but did so a little too hard and was hospitalized. Our thoughts go out to her family.

And so, despite the naysayers, freeform texting is not going to go anywhere. Indeed, its usage will seemingly grow, as dorky kids start learning about it weeks after it was cool and start doing it in a feeble attempt to gain credibility. It looks set to cross over into everyday life too, as psychiatrists are starting to use it as an aid to psychoanalysis. Who knows, it may not be long before you are sending text messages that look like Croatian shopping lists.