Multiplicity

This is probably beating a dead horse a little but I don't really like to see people feel their kids are being negated by a discussion about Lilspeak.

So I just wanted to distinguish a bit between bad spelling/grammar and Lilspeak, apart from the rant. And say why we decided to discourage our kids from learning or using it.

Children acquire language in a fairly specific pattern. This article from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders shows some of them. People who have worked in special ed (I did, although not at a very high level) know that quite often it's possible to identify a physical or neurological learning difficulty simply by looking at kids' written mistakes. Mistakes that transpose (flip) letters are one kind, mistakes that get the wrong sounds are another kind, etc. Not all spelling mistakes have a reason - that's why you get *really weird* spellings sometimes, that aren't phonetic - but that in itself demonstrates a clear stage that the child is at.

Why Lilspeak is controversial is that often the way it is written on the 'net doesn't follow the rules of language acquisition. It's not just a case of delayed development - someone in a multiple system writing like they're 5 when they're 7 - it's that the errors common in Lilspeak are not commonly made child grammatical errors. Also, as people have noted, quite often the errors are superficial - phonetic spelling, for example - while the underlying verb/tense/clause construction is fine (and quite advanced).

Now the reasons for this could be a zillion - overlapping adult consciousnesses, absorbing social/grammar/spelling rules on the net (kids are good at this - in fact that's how they absorb language), whatever. In a way Lilspeak is more like a pidgin language - a strange hybrid between how children "sound" inside and the adults hearing it. Functionally kids who use it have learned a new language.

But why it can be controversial is that anyone that is aware of how kids acquire language will not perceive Lilspeak as a child language. It may make them more suspicious and less accepting of system kids. It may in rare cases open a system child who /is/ trying to communicate to ridicule or skepticism that isn't necessary. And as a group concern (which I don't worry about too much, but it is there) it can make the typing look "faked" and "not really a kid" to anyone who's trying to prove that for whatever reason.

You could say to your average person Lilspeak probably looks the same as actual poor spelling, but I myself think anyone sensitive to language patterns will pick up on the bad-spelling-but-complex-sentences dissonance, on some level. And we have generally found that if people feel something is 'off' they get closed-minded pretty fast.

As long as one's system kids only talk to other multiple systems' kids, it won't be an issue if that's the dialect they choose to acquire and learn - so no harm, no foul in that sense. But if one's looking at a broader audience for system kids to communicate with, it may cause problems.

I don't think being aware of this is elite or snobby. I don't even think it means "down with Lilspeak!" Neither does it mean "down with bad spelling!"

I'm just saying, sometimes the Lilspeak hides the realness of the child rather than communicating that reality. And hopefully that information can be useful to people in making their own decisions about it.