South African news site News24 reported on Monday on the national government decision to establish Mxit language, a shortened social mobile style used in texting, as the twelfth official language, as an April fool’s joke.
Based on the premises of Mxlish as “completely indigenous to South Africa”, News24 feigned the green light from the Pan South African Languages Board (PanSALB).
Established in 2002 by Herman Heunis and developed by Alan Knott-Craig Jr, the South African social chat app still dominates the local market despite other competitors such as Whatsapp, WeChat and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).
Speaking to HumanIPO, Rice pointed to the similarities between sign language and Mxlish: “Mxlish is not a spoken language … and sign language is not a spoken language, it’s a signal language in the same way that Mxlish is.
“Sign language has been trying quite hard to become the twelfth official language of South Africa.
“I think, let’s just say it’s funny that we stand behind sign language to become an official language and that’s the one that should be.”
Rice deems the influence of technology on the evolution of language “interesting” with regards to its limitations, referring to Twitter’s character prohibitions and the origin of text messaging abbreviations due to mobile keyboard construction.
However, the highlight of these developments is the enhancement of flexibility, Rice believes.
“You’ve got to be quite proficient in a language to be able to shorten it the way that Mxlish is shortened… Unless you’re be pretty flexible and fully astute with English it is quite hard to read,” she adds.
Although she disagrees, Rice acknowledges the notion of Mxlish as “a kind of bastardisation of a language”.
“It’s not a dumbing down at all. It shows how we can be flexible to read which is all kind of interesting,” she said.
Mxit language developed as part of the lingo used to connect with other users through a platform of instant, low cost messaging which gained momentum in 2006, especially among high school students in South Africa.
HumanIPO reported on Mxit’s billion count of BlackBerry users last month.
Obtaining its popularity through its initial functionality on feature phones, the chat network is confident about its future on smartphones.
Now offering a variety of games, media, educational assistance and other plug-in apps, the continually upgrading chat network remains popular throughout Africa.
