bL0wg6pOszxt 3: "Its Just Gramar an Speling Aftre All.."

One of the characteristic a Filipino will surely possess is being stingy in nature. We love to recycle like using the cooking oil more than seven times or until the color is nearly dark brown. We are fond of those sales, thrift shops and imported secondhand RTWs. We love those free tastes food found in the supermarkets and the freebies given away. And of course would I forget how we love buying things little by little? Like those of shampoos in sachets, condiments in sachets rather in bottles or plastic containers and even water can be bought in sachet! In addition to that, we also prefer texting than calling because of its convenience and lower rates.

Texting is one of the communications we use every day. With just few strokes of our fingers words are typed and sent directly to our receiver. Texting from being a necessity becomes a hobby then an addiction. From the article “Texting addiction: 10 Signs your teen is addicted to texting” by Sue Scheff from the site Examiner.com, she came up with the possible signs to determine one as a text-addict:

• · Calluses on thumbs or experiencing pain or cramps because of excessive strokes done by the fingers.
• · Runs into things where kids hurry things just to do text messaging.
• · Deformed neck because of hours and hours of bowed head.
• · Speaks in acronyms like saying BTW instead of by the way, OMG for expression and the like.
• · Attached to phone wherein kids can never go anywhere without phone on one’s hand.
• · Unaware of surroundings and less focused on whatever is happening around him/her.
• · Takes phone to bed and sometimes sneaks and stay late nights just to continue conversing with their peers
• · Panics attacks whenever they are separated with their phones or whenever the phone is unseen.
• · Unable to function without the phone
• · Combative behavior whenever parents confront them about their “hobby”

This article suggests that parents should intervene if ever they saw these signs and remind their child that there is still a world outside aside from their texting world. Reading this article, I noticed that it is also a sign if someone does not give any attention to grammar and spelling of words. But texting is limited hence; we tend to shorten the words and use numbers or other signs in order to send the message. But in a technological world, does spelling and grammar really matter?

From the site livescience, an article, “Texting May Lead to Bad Grammar”, written by Megan Gannon proved that because of frequent texting, teenagers develop inappropriate grammar. And one of the reasons is the influence of their family or friends who they frequently interact and send grammatically incorrect text messages. Because of this, they tend to switch techspeak and the prescribed words when doing formal writing.

 “Do grammar and spelling matter?” by James Adonis in the site The Sydney Morning Herald stated some common errors such as the apostrophes for its and it’s, the use of article a and an before the letter H, mixing up different words such as affect and effect, complimentary and complementary, lead and led and of course you’re and your. The article’s gist is that communication is interrupted because of these flows which lessen ones credibility and professionalism.

From the article “Does Spelling Matter?” by Harvey Morris in the site IHT Rendezvous, Simon Horobin of Magdalen College, gave his insights about the accepting the change in word spellings. He also pointed out that knowing the standard spelling should not be confused with one’s intelligence. Simon Heffer, a newspaper columnist, agreed with him and stated that there are truly inane people who can spell perfectly and some apparently brilliant ones who can’t. Another article, “In An Autocorrect Generation, Does Spelling Still Matter?” found in Here & Now, with Robin Young and Jeremy Hobson supported this. It is about Connecticut eighth-grader Thomas Hurley who was a “Kids Jeopardy” contestant made it all the way to the Final Jeopardy round and even got the right answer but misspelled it. Again, Horobin insisted that spelling is important but because of technology we should be more acceptable of the changes it does to the words.

Reading the articles gave me assumptions that spelling and grammar depends on your receiver and the situation. The first article gave me the assumption that one can be less conscious about grammar and spelling when conversing with people close to you. You can use shortcut of words, may occasionally mistype some words without correcting it or even commit some grammatical flows since it is an informal conversation. On the other hand, one should be very cognizant about it when conversing formally because this affects the impression you’re leaving to the person whom you’re talking to. Or when you are in formal occasions, you should be very keen in discerning your grammar and spelling.

bL0wg6pOszxt 2: "Intelligence"

Have you ever encountered such things in your life? Probably yes. I remember when we were taking some review classes for the NCAE during our third year in high school, our teacher would give us mock tests for us to answer. Those include the verbal ability, reading comprehension, different academic questions and of course the boring, confusing and mind blowing visual-spatial tests. I would always question myself, why am I even answering questions not related to my academic career? What is the significance of those questions where in fact, they only contain images and stuff? I learned that it has something to do with one's intelligence.

The new-aged Jologs or Jejemons are often coined by rude, judgmental crowd as people with low IQ. I've read many articles and visited some forums and mostly, they were criticized because of the way they compose a message. But does the way they write or compose a message coveys their intelligence?

Back then, intelligence for me means knowing everything written on the book, EVERYTHING from top to the bottom of the cover. For me, an intelligent person is also formal in speech, writing and physical appearance. Some people consider me as an intelligent person but I never see myself as one. That brought questions in my mind on what does intelligence really mean. I was eager enough to find the answer, so I did a research and came across with an article entitled "Intelligence" by J. Lever-Duffy found in education.com. Based on the article, intelligence is a factor affecting learning. Included on this article is Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligence. Which are:

• Linguistic intelligence (verbal skills and talents related to sound, meanings, and rhythms)
• Logical-mathematical intelligence (conceptual and logical thinking skills)
• Musical intelligence (talents and abilities related to sound, rhythm, and pitch)
• Spatial intelligence (skill in thinking in pictures and visioning abstractly)
• Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (skill in 'controlling body movements)
• Interpersonal intelligence (responsiveness to others)
• Intrapersonal intelligence (high degree of self-awareness and insight)
• Naturalist intelligence (skills in recognizing, categorizing, and interacting with the natural world)
• Existential intelligence (ability to consider and deal with questions of human existence)

According to this theory, one's intelligence is a mixture of these nine. One may have all but still possess the dominating ones.

And it is possible to calculate one's intelligence using an Intelligence Quotient (IQ) Test though not all of these nine can be measured.

Another article "Intelligence: The Measurement of Cognitive Capabilities" by Angela Oswalt, MSW, edited by Mark Dombeck, Ph.D in the site Seven Counties, Inc., supported the latter article. This article also provided a brief history of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) Test. It was first conducted by Alfred Binet during the early 1900's and later revised by him and colleague Theodore Simon in order to identify students who needs special attention. Because of its purpose, Lewis Terman a psychologist from Stanford University released an improved version of the test which covers up four separate cognitive factors a) verbal reasoning which includes verbal and vocabulary problems and sentence comprehension; b) quantitative reasoning which is about math problems; c) abstract/visual reasoning for comprehending complex relationships between geometric shapes; d) short-term memory for the ability to hold facts in memory for a short period of time. An IQ test basically measures one's general knowledge and how well he/she process information, particularly the ability to store and retrieve it. American Psychological Association stated, "Intelligence describes a person's ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt to the environment, to learn from experience, and to engage in reasoning and decision-making in all sorts of situations (both new and familiar)." Which simply means that intelligence is not only about being "bookish" but rather it is a complex whole of our cognitive and physical skills. The point of this article is to tell people that intelligence is never a single ability but a collection of abilities one possess.

While reading the articles, a lightbulb suddenly lit up my head! The answer is no. Both articles served as a proof that one's intelligence can never measured by merely looking at one factor like linguistic or logical-mathematical intelligence. Its more likely that people are looking at only one perspective that's why they've concluded such things. Another reason is that maybe people just can't decipher the message that they trying to say due to decorative way of spelling words. Maybe one's score in IQ test is low but that doesn't prove that he/she doesn't know much because an IQ test as said awhile ago, only measures some but not all of the multiple intelligence. There's a possibility that one's knowledge is not measurable by the IQ test but measurable by real life situations. I therefore conclude that everyone is intelligent in our own special way. Like the Jejemons who are intelligent in making word formations and creative in spelling words.

bL0wg6pOszxt 1: "The Rise of the Jejemons: New Born Jologs"

I was browsing my Facebook account when I burst into laughter. Why? Simply because I saw my old photos during the year 2010 edited with so much elaboration and color. In addition to that, comments and posts made by my friends entertained me.

Jejemons became very viral during the year 2010. I remembered, it was given much attention than the ongoing election that year. It has influenced many people over a small period of time. From kids, teenagers and even to adults. Jejemon originated from the words "Jeje" which came from "Hehe" typically used to portray slight laughter and "Mons" (monster) from the animated series Pokemon (or Pocket Monsters).

But who/what are these Jejemons? Are they vampires like Edward Cullen? Werewolves like Jacob Black? NO. They are just ordinary people but has an "extraordinary skill" in writing. Urban Dictionary defines them as:

• a person WhO tyPeZ lYKeS tH1s pfOuh.. whether you are RICH, MIDDLE CLASS or POOR ifpK eU tYpE L1K3 tHiS pfOuh..eU are CONSIDERED AS JEJEMON.
• (noun or adj.)---a person who is very expert in typing..
• a person that nevr gets tired of typing consonants in all of his comments...
• people with very LOW IQ
• a person that destroys the morale of language in any typing media like internet,cellphones...etc...
• a person you want to fuck off and kill
• an emo/gangster who owns all the possible negative qualities of a person.
• is the derrogative term used for a certain categorized kind of people.They type JEJEJE or JEJEJE when they want to express laughing in written words, which happen more than often. This is why we call them jejes.

In addition to that, the blogpost "What it takes to be a JEJEMON" written by akosiniko, mentioned that one can be determined as a Jejemon through three signs: Jejetyping, wearing of jejehat and posting jejephotos.

First, "Jeje typing" which basically includes sticky caps, numbers and symbols instead of letters and too much punctuation marks. Words written on this manner are apparently seen on social networking sites such as Friendster, Multiply and Facebook and even in online games.

One episode of Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho (please click the video starting from 2:49-3:40) which aired May 1st of the year 2010 talked about the Jejemons.

This includes the four types of Jeje typing:

a. Mild – eow pU..MxTa pu? jejeje

(Where one can still understand what is the message)

b. Moderate – eOw pFow,, Na M1Sz pfOu qTah! mWahXz!

(Unnecessary letter and punctuation begins to appear)

c. Severe – 3ow pfU!,…aN3u pfOW gW4 n3O? tX tX nUa lHarN

(Numbers start to replace letters)

d. Terminal – “3Ow pf0U m3N4 p!p0L! nUa M1Xz k0 pF0u K30 nU4n z0bR4 wUaCk k30nG M3k A4Ng4Sz sXa b0SzX nu4 tuLad kW0

(Words can no longer be deciphered)

Second sign is wearing the so-called "Jeje hat". It is a common snap back cap designed with rainbow vertical stripes at the back but what made it "special" is that it is not worn rather, it is placed on ones head in an inclined position. (The caption says it all.)

Lastly, is when people start to sneer and swarm around your "jeje photos" over the net. "Jeje photos" includes the "jeje edits" and the "jeje pose". Jeje edits are those edited images which are pregnant so much design such as stickers and jeje texts, beautified with over contrasting colors, blurring and other stuffs edited from photo enhancing sites such as Imikimi, Picnik, PicMonkey, Blingee and Pizap. The inverted peace signs, gangster hand gestures, posing with a Starbucks coffee, zoomed-in photo of one's face, pose with an over sized sunglasses, "emo" pose where one takes a photo of him/her without looking at the camera and of course the undying fansigns are few of those "jeje pose".

These Jejemons are considered the modern-aged Jologs based on the article Jejemons: The new ‘jologs’ written by Harvey Marcoleta in Inquirer Lifestyle Beta. The article focused on three points. First, Jejemons do not exist only in the Philippines but also to the other parts of Asia. One example he gave was the Thais using "5555" in depicting laughter since 5 is read as Ha in Thai. Second and third, is about how the tolerance of "Jejemonism" can affect the literacy and in intellectualizing language in our country. In some points, the second and third contradict because the second states that in intellectualizing the Filipino language one must use it. Because of the Jejemons' existence, rationalizing our language became hard. The over-usage of letters which cause the words to be misspelled is one reason. On the other hand, the third perhaps suggest that the use of Jejemon words can help in the process but of course an intellectualized language requires formalization of words. The main point of his article is that we all have our freedom of speech. We can say anything we want in any way we want, whether I type like this or 3venH laYke tHizXs.,

Jejemaster: Aris Bonifacio

Another article, Jejemon: The Culture and Angst of Today's Youth, written by Ireno Alcala from the site HubPages supported the latter. His article included Aris Bonifacio, the so-called Jeje master. Aris claimed that they are modern Jologs who wants to be different from typical teenagers.

While reading the articles, I was asking myself what is the relation of "Jologs" and "Jejemon"? The article by Antoinette Jadaone entitled The ultimate 'jologs' quiz of 2012 in The Philippine Star's Lifestyle section answered my question. I found the connection between the two, being mainstream. Supporting the connection I found, a forum from the site pinoyexchange.com gave me some insights about being a Jolog. It came from the words dilis, tuyo and itlog which most Filipinos can afford. It is technically used to name someone who belongs to the lower class.

Jolog TV show

Epitome of Jologs

In addition to that, one is considered a Jolog if he/she follows the trend such as the Jolina Magdangal fever, a genius when it comes to afternoon and evening drama television shows, knows about the up-to-date showbiz news and those people who insists the April Boy Regino at Mystica music. It is also a word to depict the Filipino term "baduy" or someone who doesn't have a good fashion sense at all. It's either he/she wears too much colorful clothes or wears something too much conservative clothes.

Reflecting to the articles I've read, I was dumbfounded to learn I was one of those Jologs. I've always been a fan of the afternoon drama series, Daisy Siete. In fact, back then, I was able to watch the series every afternoon by sneaking out and disobeying my mom's rule to sleep during afternoon. Another thing is that I realized I was a Jejemon back then, typing words in a very delicate way. But I was one of those mild ones because you would still be able to understand the words I'm referring to.

To wrap everything up, Jologs and Jejemons have so much similarities. First, it is for the mass. For those ordinary people who loves to follow the trend. Second, the fashion. Both has a distinct fashion sense with makes it unique and can easily be pointed out. Third, the music. Both has its own music genre, "emo" or sentimental songs for the Jologs while this rap Taglish songs with robotic-like voices for the Jejemons . Last but not the least, people belonging to these groups are the subject of discrimination. People kept on pointing fingers but have they ever evaluated themselves? No. We are all Jologs and Jejemon in our simple way. Becoming a fan of a mainstream group/band makes one a Jolog and replying a simple "Wer u?" makes you a Jejemon. Just two tips, first it's just a matter on how one deals with the situation and second, it takes one to know one.

Dats ol, tnx! :D