Faye Gonzales of ABS-CBN News said: “A jejemon (short for a ‘jeje’ monster) is defined as someone who excessively uses uncommon letters such as x, y, w and h in every word or sentence, making it harder for people to understand.”
“Here’s an example: ‘EiOnG PhUaRanG gAhNitOh PoWHzz mAgZuLat,, jEjE,’ which simply means ‘Iyong parang ganito po magsulat…hehe’ (Someone who writes like this…hehe).”
It seems that Jejemon is a by-product of shortened text messages which are further polluted by those who do not really know how to spell correctly. It is just as annoying when someone uses text style messages when sending emails, as if they are paying for every letter.
Each generation had its own take on words and hand signs/body language. Until jejemon came along, the previous generations’ lingual aberrations were merely passing fads and had no debilitating effect on their practitioners’ ability to communicate and think conventionally.
Jejemon would be to language what termite is to timber. It weakens
the structure and eventually destroys its host. Although languages need to be dynamic, adding to their vocabulary of words and idiomatic expressions, these additions contribute to the effectiveness of communications. Jejemon excludes major segments of a country’s population from a minority’s communication loop and serves only to divide and isolate rather than unify a people and their nation in the task of nation building.
Where will jejemon take Philippine literature, poetry and even arts and science? A representative from the Philippines’ Department of Education said on TV that it doesn’t think jejemon is harmful to students. Of course it is not “harmful” in the sense that it will not make them blind or deaf. But it could make them brain dead and relegate them to a world where they can communicate only within their jejemon circle, aside from isolating themselves from the non-jejemon-speaking members of their own families.
? Nostradino