While communicating with other Saigon Kids some have asked me what different Internet slang terms and abbreviation mean (not that I tend to overly use them or anything like that! ). Hence, the thought occurred to me that we all have different levels of ‘computerese’ … some of us have been on the computer for years and spend a lot of time on line, while others are relatively new to computers and/or spend little time on them. Therefore, we all have varying degrees of knowledge and understanding of computer lingo and slang. In this light, I thought you might find this information informative and useful.
Internet slang, Internet language, Netspeak, Chatspeak, Leetspeak, Chat Room Shorthand, Computer Language, 1337 (or leet), Tech-Talk (as used by some chatroom users) or Nu English is slang that Internet users have coined and popularized. Such terms typically originated with the purpose of saving keystrokes, and many people use the same abbreviations in TMs (text messages) and IMs (instant messaging). Often, letters are replaced with numbers. For example, “Monkey” could be written as “m0nk3y”. This form of Internet slang is known as “leet”. Acronyms, keyboard symbols, and shortened words are often methods of abbreviation in Internet slang. Common examples of this are “LOL” (laughing out loud) “OMG” (oh my god) and “IMO” ( in my opinion).
There are also Internet slang in the phonetical style, such as “dis” (this), “luv”/”wuv” (love), “dat” (that), etc. Some Internet slang in the phonetical style has “z” instead of “s”. The terms often appear in lower case, with capitals reserved for emphasis; for example, the pronoun “I” often appears simply as “i”, “are” simply as “r”, or “you” simply as “u”. A system also exists that uses purposely misspelled words and incorrect grammar and punctuation. This is usually called “Kitteh” or “LOLcat” because it originated as the captions for images of kittens.
Click here for a complete list of Internet slang terms and abbreviations
Another area of Internet slang is Emoticons which are a graphical representation, either in the form of an image or made up of ASCII characters, of a particular emotion of the writer. The more common emoticons most are familiar with are Smileys.
Click here for a list of the more common emoticons found on the Internet
It is kind of interesting that by using Internet slang, you can write and entire email never using a word of the English language.
Now you know why folks don’t have a clue what their grand kids are talking about … but, then I suppose it was the same when we were (young) kids talking our ‘slang’ of the time … LOL 🙂
I hope you enjoyed this article and it will save you the embarrassment of having to seem ‘dumb’ about asking people what they mean by ” IC TY TTYL CU ” … Now all you have to do is click over to your ‘Saigon Kids Secret Code’ lists and they will never know you didn’t have a clue what they were taking about … Aren’t the Saigon Kids “perks” GREAT?! 🙂
As always, you’re welcome to leave your comments below.
Bob
Bob…you tapped right into my anxiety stream. Wow. Unlike all of you really old SKs, I do not have grandchildren so I don’t have to not understand what they’re saying. But I do have an 18 year old son and the highest compliment he paid me lately was that I was getting quite good at text messaging. I am embarrassed to say that I texted him for some enlightenment on abbreviations. Now I no longer need to do so and can appear incredibly “sick” – that is a good thing……..Dr. Alice Elizabeth Ahlgren, Stanford ’76…knowledge impaired.