One of the biggest problems I have in French is reading things that are misspelled, handwritten poorly, or where the writer mixes up homophones. I was taught perfect, academic, textbook French, and never developed the ability to handle such mistakes as a francophone would make (although I can easily process anglo mistakes, for obvious reasons).

It occurs to me that netspeak might be solving this problem for future generations. If kids spend time in online communities where a language other than their first is spoken (frequent with European kids hanging out in English-language communities, or using English as a lingua franca), and if netspeak is used in these communities, even if only occasionally, it might help them develop whatever mental abilities are necessary to process bad spelling.