/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/larazon/HVM4BYA3T5GRLEAKQ2UH25X7CQ.jpg "WhatsApp messages or the new Esperanto")
The other day I started looking on the mobile keyboard for the question mark that closes the questions. I did not find it, but the strange thing is that, until now, I had not thought to use it. Before long it will seem strange to me to write it in these newspaper words and eventually it will become extinct, like dinosaurs or photo shops. In a few years they will read us as we read our classics: come on, they won’t read us.
The language evolves. The problem is that there are still codes that are not common. Thus, a friend, after several messages, got an appointment during this time of confinement. When he told her that if they were to meet in the center, tomorrow afternoon, she answered “neither” and now we don’t know what to do. He is optimistic and thinks he got the first letter wrong. I would be more optimistic if I had answered “so”, simply because I find it easier to get it right in the first one.
My friend, who does not lose hope, reminded me of one of the best episodes of The Simpsons (one of the old ones, therefore), in which Homer gets fat enough to be able to work from home. All you have to do is hit the keyboard, but there comes a day when your fingers have grown so fat that you can’t type anything, not even the first few letters.
I don’t want to think what the fingers of my friend’s (im) probable date are like, but now I look at mine every time, on my mobile, I write messages in which it is impossible to understand anything and to which, however, they respond . The opposite also happens: I get a message in something that is not Spanish and, nevertheless, I have no problems reading it and answering it in what I think is Spanish, but that the proofreader corrects. Facebook, so busy collecting our data, has failed to warn us about that: it is not a proofreader, it is a translator into the WhatsApp language.
Years ago it became fashionable to speak of Esperanto, a universal language for all of us to understand each other. Thousands of articles and opinions were made about him without giving the main clue: nobody cared.
There is something good and different to that in this new language of whatsapp. It does not have a nationalist origin and whoever imposes it is nothing more than our vaguerity. Therefore, I do not doubt its resounding success. Although his development is uneven: there is my mother who spends half an hour writing to say hello and there is the one who sends you an audio, which is to have faith that you love him enough to start listening to him.
However, I am sure that the day will come when we say: “only nor is it so” and there will be no court that does not understand it.
Well, I’ll leave it: I have an audio of my friend, I’ll tell you.
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