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DepEd seeks to purge schools of ‘jejemon’ mentality


As it begins the yearly cleanup to prepare schools for the start of School Year 2010-2011, the Department of Education is also seeking to cleanse school-age Filipinos of the “jejemon" mentality. DepEd Secretary Mona Valisno strongly “discouraged" young Filipinos from using jejemon spelling and grammar, especially in popular communication platforms such as text messaging. “Dini-discourage lang namin, pag nagte-text sabi namin kailangan buong sentence at ang spelling dapat tama (We discourage them from using jejemon language especially in sending text messages. We want them to use the correct spelling and the entire sentence in sending text messages)," Valisno said in an interview on dzBB radio Saturday. She said that communicating in jejemon might cause deterioration of young Filipino students’ language skills.
The jejemon phenomenon involves the use of different spellings of common words, and is noticeable not only in text messaging but also in social networking sites. While Valisno acknowledged some cell phone users alter the spelling of long words to meet the 160-character limit of text messages, she still encouraged young Filipinos to send texts with properly spelled words. “Nagkakaroon ng deterioration kaya ang pagte-text dini-discourage ang di tama na spelling (There is a deterioration of skills when misspelling words in text messages, so we discourage that use of wrong spelling)," Valisno said. Meanwhile, Valisno reminded students they will not be allowed to use cell phones while in school. “Bawal din po yan (Cell phones are not allowed inside the school)," she said. Valisno also encouraged parents to join the “Brigada Eskwela" yearly school cleanup this coming Monday. “Ito na-institutionalize na, sa lahat na iskwela gagawin ang gabay ng community, local residents, yan ang gagampanan (‘Brigada Eskwela’ has been institutionalized. We will clean up public schools with the help of the local communities)," she said. ‘Jejetymology’ Jejemon's etymology was supposed to have started from online users' penchant to type in "hehehe" as "jejeje", either because "Jeje" is derived from Spanish, whose speakers denote the interjection as laughter, or because the letters "h" and "j" are beside each other, and that it is appended by "-mon" that came from the Japanese anime Pokémon, with "-mon" meant as "monster," hence "jeje monsters." Jejemon is a pop culture phenomenon in the Philippines. Jejemons are defined by Urban Dictionary as those "who has managed to subvert the English language to the point of incomprehensibility and online lynch squads." — LBG, GMANews.TV

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