MANILA, Philippines -The Department of Education (DepEd) may be concerned about the effect of the jejemon subculture in schoolchildren's future, but a Filipino professor says there is no cause for alarm.

"Lilipas din 'yan at normal lang na magkaroon ng variations sa language. In fact, healthy pa nga sa wika 'yun," said Dr. Jimwell Naval, who teaches at the University of the Philippines.

The professor added that jejemon is just a fad; it will not affect Pinoy lifestyle as a whole.

Neither will jejemon, he said, affect the performance of schoolchildren in entrance exams because the use of jeje-speak or jejenese, the "language" of jejemon, is just marginal.

Naval called on the DepEd instead to focus on academic issues since jejemon is just a set of codes among today's kids and is not language or literature. The youth who are into jejemon just want to give a new spin to the Filipino language.

What is jejemon?

Jejemon is a recent development in Filipino pop culture.

Jejemons, young people who are part of the subculture, deliberately exaggerate ordinary words by adding or subtracting letters, by using a mixture of capitalized and not capitalized letters in words, and even adding numbers.

The word "hello" in jeje-speak is written as "eow"; "ako" becomes "aqouh"; and "po" morphs into "pfouwh." This style is used in texting, and in communicating via social networking sites such as Friendster and Facebook.

Self-confessed jejemons Jenine Bon, 17, and Aron Lambino, 20, revealed how and why they learned jeje-speak.

"Natuto lang din po ako sa iba. Hindi ko maintindihan nung una yung sinasabi nila, pero nung tumagal, ganun na rin ako magtext. Paartehan lang po," said Jenine.

"In ka kasi pag ginamit mo yung jejemon eh. Boring din yung simpleng pagtxt," shared Aron.

In a post entitled "Rason Bakit May Mga Jejemon Dito sa Mundo" at a jejemon site, jejemons share 10 reasons for their existence. The first reason: "Gs2 q p0wHGs2 q p0wH~ sIlA mSHocK SA aKin Kpg mY Bg0 aqng w0rd~ NA~ NaiimBEN2 P0WH.~ JEjE. Translation: Gusto ko po silang mashock sa akin kapag may bago akong word na naiimbento. Hehe."

LFS: Barking at wrong tree pohw

The League of Filipino Students (LFS) is also calling on the DepEd to focus on other problems in education instead of the jejemon issue. "They are barking at the wrong tree pohw. Mas maganda mag-all out war na lang sila sa mga textbook errors at corruption issues sa DepEd imbis na jejemon," said Terry Ridon of the LFS.

At a press briefing in Malacañang, Education Secretary Mona Valisno expressed concern over jejemon and called the attention of teachers on the need to inculcate proper values, including communication skills, on the young as these are necessary for them in high school and even college.

The DepEd reiterated though, that it is not inclined to ban the practice of jeje-speak or jejenese, the unique "language" of jejemons, among schoolchildren.

“We want to maintain our dominance in communication skills, which has made our country very attractive to investors in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector because our people have very good communication skills and are easily trainable,” Valisno said.

“But I will not go to the extent of banning it in elementary schools or high schools. I am just urging the teachers to ensure that proper communication skills and values are continuously imparted to the students. We do not need to issue a memorandum or impose penalty for such practice,” she stressed.

Valisno added, “I only order the teachers not to allow wrong English, wrong spelling and wrong grammar. We would like to encourage our children to text in the correct way, [use] correct construction of sentence, correct English, grammar and spelling because they would need this practice in their higher years.”

“Practice makes perfect. So if you resort to wrong practice, then the outcome is also wrong. Just like in piano if you resort to wrong finger dexterity, you can’t correct that anymore,” Valisno added. --With report from Atom Araullo, ABS-CBN News.