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The daily vocabulary of teenagers consists of just 800 words because they tend to favour 'teenspeak' used in text messages, a government adviser has warned.

Jean Gross, England's first Communication Champion for Children, believes that teenagers are risking unemployment because of their limited vocabulary.

She highlighted research by Tony McEnery, a professor of linguistics at Lancaster University, who examined ten million words of transcribed speech and 100,000 words from teenagers' blogs.

The research was funded by Tesco, the supermarket group whose chief executive Sir Terry Leahy recently raised concerns about the 'woefully low standards in schools.

It found that teenagers use 20 words in a third of their speech, but also used words that adults may not understand. These include 'chenzed', which means tired or drunk; 'song', which means silly and 'lol', shorthand for 'laugh out loud'.

However, the majority of teenagers have developed a vocabulary of 40,000 words by the age of 16, even if they choose to use just two per cent of these.

Gross said: 'Teenagers are spending more time communicating through electronic media and text messaging, which is short and brief. We need to help today's teenagers understand the difference between their textspeak and the formal language they need to succeed in life.'

Gross will launch a campaign next year, targeting primary and secondary schools, to prevent children failing because of their inability to express themselves.

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