Jejemon and the Society

It is a phenomenon in the Philippines and it’s popping up everywhere; from cellphone messages (SMS), social networking sites and it even invaded the fashion trend! Since it is truly widespread, Jejemonism and Jejemons has merited both acceptance and hatred from the Filipino society.

A column from The Philippine Daily Inquirer by Harvey Marcoleta, describes jejemons as “a new breed of hipsters who have developed not only their own language and written text but also their own sub-culture and fashion”.

Jejemonism have gain wide acceptance and is “very” contagious to the hip and young minds. Yet, hatred and rants from those people who value good communication and proper usage of the language.

What’s with jejemons linguistic style?

Jejemons uses Jejenese as thier language and Jejebet, mixture of the normal, numeric and special characters, as their alphabet in their communications. From UrbanDictionary.com, jejemon is “anyone with a low tolerance in correct punctuation, syntax and grammar”. In Jejenese, word are created by rearranging the letters in a word, alternating capitalization and the addition of letters H, Z and X to create “special sound effects” upon reading. Assume that a message like these pops up in your cellphone or PC:

hI!i LLyK tO knOw u, PwfoH. crE 2 t3ll mE yur N@me? jejejejeje!
(Hi! i like to know you, care if you tell me Your name? Hehehe)

Will you be amused and join the craze or you’ll get irritated and be a Jejebuster?

Many are concerned to the effects of Jejemonism of the language. Yet no one can really prevent the Jejemons in using their Jejenese for all of us are granted with the Constitutional Right: freedom of expression and of speech.

But, what’s the point of attending our language classes when at the end of every class it is that Jejenese we are using in our communications.

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