Øn b31n9 a Jeje

The Jejemons have finally reached national popularity. Thanks to the overacting Filipinos who fed news programs and TV shows. The Department of Education added more spice when it jumped into the bandwagon, showed despise over this seemingly pandemic language “breakdown” and declared an “all-out war” against Jejemons—as if they have nothing more serious problems to think about. To the DepEd, what you should look into are the TEXTBOOK scandals (among other issues) that your office has been involved, and not the way Filipinos TEXT.

As much as I can, I tried avoiding discussions about Jejemons in threads and e-mails, since I don’t see this as anything important to discuss. However, I think it is high time that I share my opinion since I have observed that most of my students in Foundations have already identified themselves as Jejebusters (anti-Jejemon group). In this entry, I shall try to enumerate my views regarding this “language phenomenon” as much and as briefly as I can. (Disclaimer I am neither a language expert nor a linguist, I am merely a Language student.)

1. Creating language

Jejenese isn’t anything new. Every now and then, humans create and re-create language for different purposes. Why? Because humans are rationale beings, and because language is dynamic. In 2005, Sophie Nichol, a PhD student at Deakin University published an article at the Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society. She explored the linguistic creativity of gamers in online communities. These particular groups labelled their language as “leet speak” or “1337 5p34k” a language that incorporates language and digits. Primarily, the purpose of these groups is to create a sort of “exclusivity” i.e. if you can’t understand this language, then it means you’re not part of this community.

The same purpose is evident among Jejemons. However, I find it funny because people who don’t understand them (and don’t want to understand them) hated them, although there are really reasons to hate. I think the only problem among Jejemons is their lack of sociolinguistic competence, i.e. their ability to use appropriate language in particular situations. They have embraced the language too much that they use it outside their speech community.

2. Language Sub-Cultures

I found it amusing when my high school and college classmates remembered the same “language creation” that emerged in the 90s (yeah…it shows my age). If I remember it well, certain groupies started to use the “GA” language (it wasn’t labelled as GA, I just named it as such for discussion purposes) so that other people, especially our teachers won’t understand them. My classmates, mostly females, mastered adding “GA” in every syllable that they would utter. Thus, “NAKITA MO BA SI PEDRO? YUNG SYOTA NI MARIA?” becomes “NAGAKIGITAGA MOGO BAGA SIGI PEGEDROGO? YUGUNG SYOGOTAGA NIGI MAGARYAGA?” They even practiced and reached that level of fluency from which they would utter sentence very quickly.

The same process happens now. Every generation would “invent” something that would eventually become a fad. The “GA” language died eventually, so will the Jejemon, which brings me to my 3rd point.

3. Jejebusting

I was tagged on a Facebook photo which shows a Jejebusting tool—something that looks like an insecticide. I laughed when I saw it, not because of the intended message, but because of the futility of the cause. Years of scientific research has proven how insects evolved and eventually became immune with insecticides. We might have killed some, but never the entire species. The same goes with Jejebusting. It’s just an exercise in futility. The best tool for Jejebusting—if there is any—would probably be indifference. Language is a tool for communication. If someone texts you using Jejenese and you ignore it, they would eventually shift from Jejenese to “normal” mode (if they really intend to transact and interact). At the end of the day, the Jejemons are the ones that should be alarmed and not us, because their sort of language would never become codified and formalized—unless, of course, if their number grows on a massive scale that they would outnumber the “normal” group.

4. Brain-based language research

If there’s anything that the “normal” group should worry, it should be our difficulty in decoding Jejenese. In 2008, Perea et. al. stated that “In sum, despite the fact that digits and letters may have different cortical mechanisms when they are presented together with other digits or letters (Polk et al., 2002), the cognitive system regularizes the shape of the leet digits (and letter-like symbols) embedded in words with very little cost.” This should worry us because if we find it difficult to decode Jejenese, or if we are too slow in decoding, then there might be something wrong in our cortical mechanisms, which may affect the way we think and understand.


Language is complex and to attribute the continuously declining English proficiency of Filipino students, in this sense grammar and spelling, to Jejenese would be too hasty, if not fallacious.

At a certain point in every rationale human being’s life, he/she becomes part of a certain language group. We may not want ourselves to be tagged as a Jejemon, but we were, we are. It just has a different name.