Guess when this was first written – “I wrote 2 U B 4”?

Bombaugh's book available today

As we know the English language is constantly evolving; but I’m sure it will surprise many of us to learn that this expression was being used at least one hundred and fifty years ago, and possibly over two hundred years ago.

Great writers, poets and communicators throughout the ages have experimented and developed the written and spoken language ... which continues apace today.  Code, short forms had been around for centuries – and in a sense all languages and writing systems are codes for human thought.

Charles Carroll Bombaugh, who coined and spread text-speak during the 1800s via his book ‘Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature’, experimented with constrained writing including the  “univocalic” , that uses only one vowel within his writings – this is one of his best-known ones:

“No cool monsoons blow soft on Oxford dons,

Orthodox, job-trot, book-worm Solomons.”

David Crystal's book - available at the British Library

I visited the British Library's Exhibition on Evolving English a few months back, which was heaving with members of the populace!  So I had a look round, picked up David Crystal's book, some postcards on vocabulary and text-speak... 


... including the full version of this article, originating from the Columbia (Pa) Spy sometime in the early 1800s, here are four of the verses of "The Essay to Miss Catherine Jay" - (Katie Jay of Utica, or Uticay), which Bombaugh included in his book: Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature, Science and Art: A melange of Excerpta, Curious, Humorous, and Instructive (reprinted 1860).

An S A now I mean 2 write
2 U sweet K T J,
The girl without a ||,
The belle of U T K.

I 1 der if U got that 1
I wrote 2 U B 4
I sailed in the R K D A,
And sent by L N Moore. . . .

This S A, until U I C
I pray U 2 X Q's
And do not burn in F E G
My young and wayward muse.

Now fare U well, dear K T J,
I trust that U R true--
When this U C, then you can say,
An S A I O U.

In the original the pilcrow   “¶”   appears as a symbol showing the start of a paragraph, as do other symbols providing a challenge to modern readers.  Many of us will recognise the pilcrow, though I didn’t know it was called that, from our typing or publishing days.

Available from the Google electronic library are further examples, including Elizabeth G Bainbridge’s Schoolroom Games and Exercises – which elaborate on the spelling and composition as used at that time.

However - I still cannot make head or tail what ‘R K D A’ means: any ideas please to put me out of my misery – perhaps Arcadia?

... nor for that matter “I pray U 2 X Q's, And do not burn in F E G”: I’m sure it’s very obvious ... but my mind’s a blank, as it is with texting ... I query my education sometimes, and most definitely my recent modern techie one!  Then there’s LEG, appearing in the full verse, .. what’s that too ...?

This is some of the text as it appears in Schoolroom Games and Exercises:

SPELLING AND COMPOSITION HELPS. 61

I sailed in the 11 K 1) A,

And sent by L N Moore.
My M T head will scarce contain

1 calm I I) A bright,

But A T miles from U I must

M /—^^ this chance 2 write.
And 1st should N E N V U,

B E Z, mind it not;
Should N E friendship show, B true,

They should not B forgot.

Book of Kells per Wikipedia - Folio 34r

contains the Chi Rho monogram.   Chi

and rho are the first two letters

of the word Christ in Greek.

During the past two hundred years so much has happened in the communication world that we are now coping with the third major technological development of texting, after having conquered the telegraph and the telephone.

We still read and talk – just?! – our learning and history are embedded within the books lining the libraries of the world – now being available to all, especially with the advent of the internet ... but consider those medieval manuscripts that abbreviated words as a matter of course, to save space on precious and expensive parchment ... if anything it emboldened the world to write and record our words for posterity.

Will texting or text-speak finally give the death-knell to reading and writing – that I don’t think can happen for a long time as we need governance, rules and regulations ... in the meantime our brains have to cope with the new ways ... and that digit, our thumb, is finding a new life of its own.  Life is interesting ...

1)     U Not Thnk So?

C U B4 2 Long.

My M T head wil B Gr8ful 4 Normal Wri10 Comments

MYTe Gr8ful   ?!!

My inspiration came from the Evolving English Exhibition held over the winter 2010/2011 at the British Library - for further reading:  

“The Origins of Text-Speak” written by Ben Zimmer.

Evolving English Exhibition: British Library – Curator’s Blog 

The whole essay can be found here under 'Emblematic Poetry' – Gleanings from the Harvest Fields of Literature ... captured and made available by Google books

Elizabeth G Bainbridge: Schoolroom Games and Exercises – page 4 (scroll down to number 60 - 61)

Last entry of British Library’s Evolving English Podcasts .. is the talk given by David Crystal on “Evolving English – One language, many voices”. 

British Library's main web page 

Dear Mr Postman – I expect you’ve been dealing with these sorts of things in letters for many years – but to me is something I need to get to grips with ... my mother will be interested though;  she has been quite awake recently and enjoying the summer season of festivities and sports.

Hilary Melton-Butcher

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