Child talk in Sl

I hate to even bring this up but has anyone but me noticed the increasing number of people saying things like u for you, 4 for for, r for are, plz for please and so on both in the forums and inworld? These acronyms not only slow down the reading comprehension of English speakers but also may totally baffle a person trying to learn English.

I suppose there may be some adults talking like this but it is child talk as far as I am concerned and totally insensitive to the reader.

lazy talk, not child talk.... most children are learning so dont use things like that. Being proper shows children are wanting to grow up so never would I call it child talk. Its just plain, damn, lazy talk.

When ou open up a medium such as SL, which was previously limited to the bleeding edge people, to the masses, this is what happens.

Hi Toy! Long time no see. You may be totally correct but when someone talks that way it makes me think teen. I may be wrong...

What brought this up was I was at a place and an English speaker was asking another person "where r u from" and he was baffled why the person he was talking to had no idea what he was saying.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

I always TRY to use full words. Once in a conversation for a length of time, or after a long day at RL work (in front of a computer all day) I do tend to get lazy. I will be the first to admit it. When with friends, some of us use "shorthand". Just makes the conversation flow a bit faster.

I think it is a good thing Shows stupidity much more quickly, so I know who to avoid.

But U and R aren't words.

I think of it as sort of like an automatic idiot indicator light.

I dislike the vast majority of internet shorthand, but 'ne1' (anyone) makes me twitch in particular.

For me its all about usage.

I doubt the chat window in SL can handle a large paragraph, let alone "who really wants to read alot of text in a visual medium", so for length constraints, I can see shortening things here & there.

BUT- if all one types is 'internet/text message shorthand', then yea, u haf problemz.

You could blame this partly on technology, partly on laziness, and partly on the dumbing down of education.

Technology requires us to keep up with it. Therefore we shorten certain words to "speed up" our reading time.

Laziness, because really- who wants to read tons of text on a screen?

Dumbing down of Education- Heh! Go talk to a 16 yr old. I work with 'em & its quite scary what they're taught or not.

I remember back in the day when I used to get booted out of IRC chats for using full complete sentences and punctuation.

Could be worse though! 7h3y c0u|d b3 7yp1n6 1n |337 5p34k!!

While it has been the rage to shorten words into cute codes for quite some time, cellphone "txting" has driven it into high gear in the last couple three years :/

Most of the population in SL actually seems to be much older than the normal txters and leet speaking IM crowd. I actually run into it here less often than almost anywhere else on the net!

I just suffer from short fingers and bad spelling myself

Well, I think it is not so much an idiot marker as a sign of someone who does a lot of text messaging on handheld devices with difficult keyboards, i.e. all phones and most PDAs. And thus, yes, it is generally a marker of youth, because older folks use email and sometimes IM, but rarely SMS, studies show. Blackberry and other smartphone users enjoy the luxury of being able to type these acronyms and have the device expand them, but this is rarely used since the recipient is usually on a very small-screened device as well.

I have to say that ne1 always gives me a kick, it is almost clever. But LOL makes me want to slit the person's throat ... particularly when i find myself using it!

It makes sense for some SL users to act like teens, since 18 and 19 year old adult SL users are teens. Further, behavioral patterns such as how one types don't necessarily change overnight once one reaches the age of twenty and leaves the teens behind.

It's certainly legitimate to have a negative view of typographic slang, but this isn't the complaint forum, is it?

One might as well object to people wearing the wrong color clothes, or dancing the jig instead of the foxtrot.

With regards to making it hard for "foreigners" to understand, the Chinese folks I've been chatting with use lots of the shorthand terms such as OIC for Oh I See and similar abbreviated typing conventions. This probably spares them from having to spell so many hard to spell English words, and might also comes from using text messaging as well.

At the same time, my typing is not always real accurate, so I've had some sessions where I would make a lot of errors like "tow" for "two" and other similar errors, and some of the readers weren't able to figure the errors out. I'm sure native English speakers would have figured the errors out quite easily. I expect it would be the same with 4 for four and such, if the non-native-English speaker wasn't into shorthand speech it would an extra layer of confusion added to the language problem just like my crummy typing.

I suspect that some shorthand typers do it because it makes them feel young, or it feels amusing or cool. Same for leet speakers. Especially after a few beers and or other intoxicants.

I generally try to use correct english and spelling, but it varies according to who I'm with. If the people I'm with use a lot of shorthand, I tend to do so as well. The thing that irritates me more than shorthand, is people who insist on correcting every little typo by sending another chat to correct it, when it was perfectly obvious what they meant the first time.

Textspeak is not necessarily a guide to the age or intelligence of the speaker. It is far more a guide to the extent that they use things like chat rooms, text messages, etc., but even then it's not a very reliable guide.

Language evolves, ours is currently evolving because of the influence of technology. In 100 years time U and R and LOL will probably be in the dictionary as alternative, or possibly even the preferred, usages. How much of Shakespeare's vocabulary and spelling do we use in our everyday conversations?

Haha. I thought you were going to mention someone saying, "Mommy I weewee in my pants."

My alertness does go up when I speak with someone using shorthand as I expect they might be griefers but I do tend to use shorthand if someone else uses it first. I've got to give them some leeway as they might be illiterate or typing with their toes or something.

In some cultures, you either type like that or gtfo.

Acutally, it can handle quite a bit. But writing is a visual medium, and SL for many of us is far more about communicating with people than pretty graphics. So yes, people can and do read quite a bit.


These shortcuts don't speed up reading. They often slow it down.

The motivation has nothing to do with reading time. It's speeding up typing time, as well as fitting on small cell phone screens.

Personally, I think all of these shorthands are for people who flunked typing class.

LOL drives me loopy....but not as much as ROTFLMAO..... Most times I ignore it but if Im feeling particularly grumpy I'll say...'kindly get off the floor and pick up your arse'.

Having spent several years online and watched the changes that come with time, I think it's fair to say that in a dominantly American group, the introduction of texting as a viable alternative to standard English in written communication is much more widely adopted in the crowd that is *currently* under 25. That crowd is growing older, much like the crowd of people who could manage adult lives while still playing "kids" console games continues to grow older. It's a mark of the generation- the introduction of texting as a real means of communication. The same way people under a certain age *tend* to use email as a primary form of communication. It was perfectly normal for me near the end of my high school to shoot off half a dozen emails a day to my friends filled with non-urgent questions and chatter. I still use email as my primary way of talking with friends and family when my question isn't urgent or I just want thier thoughts on something specific. The same way that people under a certain age *tend* to use and abuse cellphones while out in public- to do everything from confirming a choice of beef cut to bring home from the grocery to getting directions to general chatter.

My parents adjust well to technology and changes, but the cellphone is an emergency use item for them. It doesn't dawn on my mom to leave home without having explicit directions or to call home and double check if my dad thinks they could go through an extra gallon of milk that's on sale before it goes bad or if he wants the cherries on special. It doesn't dawn on her to send me an email with a quick question- she'll wait until she's at home, and call me up from her home phone. (Usually interrupting my dinner, since she can't conceive that my household runs on a much later clock than hers.) She had an accident while out an hour from civilization on her motorcycle and instead of using her cellphone to call one of the kids to come pick her up and haul the bike to a tech to check it's roadworthy-ness and take her home to dunk her in a hot bath and make sure she was all in one piece- that damn woman got back on the bike and drove it home missing a headlight and badly bruised (for reference it took 6 weeks at a repair shop before they pronounced it ridable and she pulled her shoulder out of joint.). It wasn't an "emergency" which I can only take to mean "I was pretty sure I wasn't bleeding internally". That sort of calling people up while away from home simply doesn't occur to her. She writes her emails like a formal letter and probably runs them through spell and grammar checkers before sending.

I missed the texting "jump"- I'm 27. My younger sister at 23 did not. I don't text people on my cellphone, it seems rather odd to be truthful when I could just give them a ring and actually speak to them.... but my sister finds it perfectly normal. She's got a myspace, unlimited texting, and types in u and ne1 and all sorts of other contractions that barely make sense to me. It's normal for her.

People can attach themselves to technology beyond their age group- but most won't. I'll keep on typing in full words. My mom will keep refusing to use her cellphone except when she's bleeding from the ears.

I'd love it if my sister could speak normally in text. It drives me nuts trying to talk to her in emails or keep up with her myspace. I'm sure my mom is just as frustrated at my "inability" to set aside half an hour every few days to call her up from my home lie to her home line and discuss my non-time-sensitive questions at *my* convenience and demand that she put aside her evening plans to communicate. I think it's more courteous to email her those and not bother her unless she's set aside time to read her mail. She thinks it's somewhat disrespectful to not "keep in contact".

You say po-ta-toe. I say po-tah-toh.

Agreed.

Indeed, only that it is no really new. Using number and/or letters to stand in for phonologically similar words has been around in sign and poster language far longer than text messaging.

I still fondly remember a holiday on Malta in 1987 where I saw a shop sign that said:

What U
Cant C
Ask 4

Which is why I find this quite interesting from a linguistic point of view - but then I AM a linguist, so what would you expect ...

I hadn't heard of "ne1", by the way - so thanks!

Wulfric...
"How much of Shakespeare's vocabulary and spelling do we use in our everyday conversations?"

a fair bit...but i agree it depends on the user.. like me...Incony.

http://www.william-shakespeare.info/william-shakespeare-dictionary-i.htm

Language is part of evolution, take something simple like "hmmm" or its derivatives.

I am sure such a fundamental noise was made by our ancestors, but i dont know if apes have a similar voiced noise.. and it might mean something totally different.

For me, " hmmm" is indicative of conscious thought in question about an attached subject.. it doesnt appear in the dictionary but is used everyday... neither does "mmmm" which can be indicative of "tasty" , but for both it is the voiced inflection that determines how they are interpreted. "ha" is another word in everyday use in both voice and text, that is interpretation subjective.

the word gay... changed its interpretation in a few years..

2, two, to, or too? word survival depends on where you are going, and how many are going with you, just because the interpretation changes, doesn`t negate the use.

Yes i hate when people type wat for what stuff like that is lazy.
But i really hate when people call their husbands hubbys ,,,, just irks me to no end.

wel ppl, few 2 many generalisations gng dwn here 4 wot its worth [damn! couldn't find a clever abbreviation for 'generalisations' - but i'll work on that l8r!]

All depends on how much you keep abreast of language and its myriad changes - and whether you accept that language will always change, whether you like it or not.

I use my mobile phone to text more than I do to talk, and I abbreviate like crazy to save characters (i.e. money). I'm a fast touch-typist, so it's actually harder for me to abbreviate on a keyboard than it is to type words in full (although I LMAO and ROFL quite frequently). As a writer, I always have and always will rejoice in the wonder of words, in whatever form.

Convoluted language can often be just as difficult for non-English speakers as shortened forms. Learning abbreviations in another language is akin to learning slang in that language, which is essential for easy communication (I speak from experience, not theory). Think of it as broadening your vocabulary, not limiting it.

Oh, and for those who think txt spk is the province of the young, or mere laziness, I'll soon be young enough to draw a pension. Now, lazy... that's a different matter... !