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Julie Bishop is Australia's foreign affairs minister. In 2015, the popular website BuzzFeed interviewed her. They asked her many questions. They asked about her life. And they asked about Australia's government. They asked about Australia's relationship with other countries.
All of these are normal questions. Government leaders like Julie Bishop often answer these questions. But this time, Bishop's answers were not normal. She did not answer these questions by speaking. And she did not answer these questions by writing. In fact, she did not use any words at all. Julie Bishop answered all of these questions using emojis - small pictures sent from her phone.
When BuzzFeed asked Bishop what she likes to do, she answered with emojis of a book, a music device, and a television. BuzzFeed asked about Australia's relationship with China. Bishop answered with an emoji of a happy face. BuzzFeed asked how Bishop exercises. She answered with an emoji of running shoes and an emoji of a person dancing.
BuzzFeed claims that this was the world's first political emoji interview. It was not a serious interview. It was an experiment. However, it was important. It shows how the way people communicate is changing. Today's Spotlight is on the ways mobile phones have changed communication.
People all over the world use mobile phones to communicate. These phones let people speak to each other no matter where they are. Mobile phones also make it possible to communicate without speaking. Millions of people use their mobile phones to write short messages every day. These messages are called text or SMS messages.
But there are some problems with sending text messages. Mobile phones often have small buttons. It is difficult to write text messages with these small buttons. So people often remove letters from the common words in their messages. For example, in English, the word "you" is spelled with three letters: Y, O, and U. But the letter "U" sounds like the word "you." So people can write the word you with one letter instead of three. The word "see" can be written as just the letter "c." And the word "wait" can be written as "w8." Writing these shorter words is easier and faster. And a person can still understand these shorter words.
Even some complete messages can be written with only a few letters. For example, a person can write "Laughing out loud" as "lol". This is a common answer when a person receives a funny message from a friend. Another common text message is "talk to you later." This can be shortened to "ttyl." Making words and phrases shorter in this way is called "text speak."
These are all examples of English language text speak. But text speak is not only part of the English language. Almost every language in the world has its own text speak. What text speak do you use?