Child talk in Sl

A heart? Huh. Ok. Still makes me think of a teenage girl proudly pushing forward her pert . . um, what was I talking about?

I draw a distinction between shortening words by dropping vowels or substituting "u" for "you" and acronyms such as "lol" and "brb". Acronyms don't bother me at all for some reason, and in some cases they make up for the inability to easily communicate emotions that, in normal conversation, would be communicated by tone or facial expression. "Lol" is a good example. I use it to communicate either that I'm kidding or that I recognize the other person is. If they actually make me laugh out loud, I'm likely to note that seperately. It's a common enough acronym that the vast majority of internet users know what it means. I'm going to try to stop using it now that I know it gets on people's nerves. I really had no idea.

Here's the problem, though. I'm not a quick typist, and I have fingers like sausages, so if I hurry to try to keep up with a conversation in chat, I make typos. Am I offending people with those? I usually don't correct them, but sometimes they are particularly egregious (I typed "tits" for "its" recently and felt obliged to correct myself). I can sacrifice speed for accuracy, but then I can't keep up with the conversation. What do I do?

Sadly I am guilty of using short words occasionally.. I remember when I first started playing MMO'S (that's massively multiplayer online) for you short cut haters ..
It used to drive me crazy.. but now I catch myself doing it... Mostly with a few close friends, but when I do it, and see myself typing it i want to cut my fingers off...

Oooh, when I make typos, I want to bite my fingers off, and other people's typos make me feel jittery too....they make me want to bite THEIR fingers off...and I like to collect TotD (Typos of the Day).
But never mind, it's not contagious, it just comes with my job (reaching/copy-editing, that kind of stuff) and I'm not doing it to pi$$ anyone off

Now I'm a little afraid to talk to you. I need all my fingers. In RL, I have plenty of time to edit and check my work product before it goes out and I hate typos as well. Even here, I make a passing attempt not to make too many mistakes; but in chat, I just can't take the time and still keep up with the conversation. It's even worse when I'm doing other things, such as trying to keep the biplane above ground with a passenger on the wing.

I guess people are going to have to give me a pass or just avoid talking to me.

I was joking. I make fun of Raynor all the time because he can't type fast AND without mistakes AT ALL...

Hm, it's my birthday today, it's already September 5 around here-WHERE IS MY BIRTHDAY CAKE?

What's funny, and scary, is that I read that without even thinking about it ... and I'm 35.

For me personally, I try to use proper grammar and punctuation when I type in SL. If I make a typo and catch it, I always follow it up with an immediate correction so people don't think I'm stpuid. *stupid.

I do not use the typical txt msg slang such as l8r, gr8, CU, WRUD, etc ... However, I do use many of the SL socially acceptable abbreviations.

TKU - Thank You
YW - You're welcome
BRB - Be Right back
WB - Welcome Back
AFK - Away From Keyboard

Etc ...


But, to answer your original question, yes, I have noticed an increase in the txt slang, and typically I will cut short a conversation when someone uses nothing but slang. I prefer intelligent conversations. Not that using slang means you aren't intelligent. I just prefer not to converse with that.

Yeah, when it becomes unintelligible, excuse yourself.

I went off on someone for using chat-shorthand.... they're intelligent, articulate, educated... why on earth would they resort to "i c u dn't get my msg, 2 bad u dn't..."

They said: "Because I keep running into the message length limit when texting people on my phone."

I grumbled but forgave them for it. There's no excuse in SL though... we've got plenty of space to compose our messages in.

Like baby talk, or couples freaky sweetie-babble... this kind of gibberish should be something people would be ashamed of using when talking to strangers.

I knew you were. I'm probably just as bad, if not worse than Raynor. I never got the hang of touch typing, but I have a couple degrees that would lead one to believe that I should be mildly above average in my writing skills. I don't think I am, but who knows. At any rate, I'm not a linguist, so that's a little intimidating. I don't want to say anything stupid. Well, stupider than usual. Hmm.. say anything stupidly? Let's face it, the content is likely to be stupid, but I don't want the delivery to be equally stupid. How's that?

/me gives you a belated cake. Watch out, the candles are lit.

Linden liaisons use the textspeak.

Mia Linden, for an example, in the Volunter chat, will toss one "u" in the middle of an otherwise normally written sentence; u wouldn't think the minor amount of time saved in doing so would be worth the discordant effect it produces in some readers, would u?

Take a touch typing class, or get some software for learning typing and work on it. Touch typing is the most valuable class I had in junior high.

In a group, it's not necessary to keep up by responding to every remark. Slow down, stop talking so much . Seriously. Obviously, I have no idea how much you actually talk in a group, so I'm not criticizing you, but when everyone feels a need to say something, the usual result is boring conversation.

I had it in High School and it was the only time my mother's advice was correct. We learned on Manual Typewriters (PCs werent common yet). Took me a while learning to type on a PC Keyboard without breaking it.

I've seen & known slow typists, bad spellers, and people with trouble reading lines of scrolling text in a conversation. For folks like this I give a lil' leniency for bad grammar & typing.

Besides, are you here to chat & have fun or are you applying for a high-paying job?

Normally, I am not too bad at speaking or writing English and I have to admit, That I use stuff like AFK, LOL or thx as well, but this txt speak is often pretty hard to understand, especially if it looks and sounds like something I know from my native language.

In the part of Germany I live in, ne ist slang eine which means an (e.g. ne Stunde = an hour) or 'ne?' means 'isn't it?'. Therefor the first time I saw ne on the net I thought it was someone mixing german into the text (which made no sense at all that way of course) and have since then stumbeled upon this a couple of times without being much wiser. I didn't even think about trying to check how it sounds if you pronounce just the letters (ok, I admit, dumb and old ..... my first computer was a Commodore 64 back when it was state of the arts ..... yes, that old ) . It took this thread to finally figure out, what it really means.

For non native speakers it gets even harder if those shortcuts are used for slang. In one forum I used to visit someone said that someone else had BTF and I was sort of amazed by the reactions this caused ...... well, how should I know that BTF meant 'bought the farm' which means that someone was killed?

From my point of view as a non native speaker I definetly prefer to see complete words and sentences because it makes it so much easier for me to understand the people I am talking to.

peeks in to check out thread, , then leaves.....

It all depends who I'm talking to.

If the people I'm talking to use a lot of abbreviated text, then I tend to as well. It just sort of happens... it's sort of like how I almost seem to start picking up an accent in RL when I'm around people of a given accent. Age has nothing to do with it, I'm not young but I still find myself saying, "how r u today, yep, me 2... " etc. etc around certain people. The one shortened form I *won't* use however, is "no" for "know" as in, "I no wot u mean"....

The odd thing though is it takes just as long for me to type "u" as "you" because I have to make a mental translation in my mind....

Well, for English not being my main language it already hard enough to use right grammar and alike.

Now, I don't mind abbrevations as LOL or IHMO when not overdone.

A friend of mine, who is English teacher, told me some time ago that she sees rather often things a u, m8, 4us and alike in written essays of her students. She acts very hard on it.
It made me think and after talking about it with my daughter (who used it also a bit on MSN) that it is no good. And on her own request I correct her when I see it.

It may have nothing to do with laziness and not being very clever, but it sure does look that way to me.

Morwen.

Try playing World of Warcraft.

*sigh* I felt so OLD there.

It is all L33T speak - which, coupled with the astoundingly bad spelling and grammar made the game something of an exercise in decoding.

In particular I noticed how many people used 'mist' for 'missed', or 'hopt' for 'hoped'. Looks like English is going through a lot of new evolutions.

Let me see if I can indeed sound vacant here, correct me if I am wrong:

Ow r u, I m fine, I just made my 1st objct in SL! It fun, u can make all sorts of things.

Or:

How are you, I am fine, I just made my first object in Second Life! It is fun, you can make all sorts of things.

Here is a good one:

Y Y U R Y Y U B I C U R Y Y 4 ME!

in many cases, I have seen Y in place of Why, U in place of You, M in place of Am, and other such shortcuts, to me, they are just plain lacking and show a somewhat uneducated approach to speach.

Typographical errors are different, when using a keyboard combined with severe lag, anything can happen and will. Typo, in most cases, I can at least make out what the person is saying.

I also tend to correct mistyped text when speaking, and often had people walk off when they think I am ignoring them by taking so long with my sentence.

I have most of those (an some others) all gestured, so they spell out fully on-screen - cuz to me anyting said on screen without a "/me" has gotta be spoken language, and it's awful hard to pronounce BRB, let alone TKU.

Mari

Hehe - typo of the summer, for me, was the case of the missing space - "Wow - all thesemen for me ?" - spoken by a Dutch lady....

BTW - still annoyed at you Americans for what you did to "colour" and for not pronouncing the second "i" in "aluminum" *grin*

Oh yes, I have that same problem. I'm a very hard typist. I type in the high 80's, but it's like my fingers are going through the bottom of the keyboard. I learned to type on an *OLD* manual Royal typewriter. I adapted to electric typewriters, but I still hit the keys pretty hard.

I admit, I do use some abbreviations, not so much in SL, but when you're in a combat MMO, saving time saves lives... things like:

kk == rightio, you bet, sure thing, m'kay, aye-aye, acknowledged...

np == no problem, you're welcome, prego, no worries, my pleasure...

eep! == Oh crap, big ugly unexpected nasty beside/behind us, heads up!

And, I've picked up a bad habit of replying to compliments or thanks with
just smilies, 'you're welcome' just seems so... stuffy.

Is it "Zoh my god what the f**k laughing out loud rolling on the floor-copter barbecue!!!"?

/me LOLs while sucking on her LOLipop and skating on her LOLerskates

Think most have seen this Cingular commercial but since it's somewhat on topic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nIUcRJX9-o

These are one of those things that started long time ago more due to lack of features we now enjoy in computers today than due to laziness. Later, ya, lazy talk soon after. Theres is l337 talk, also. Has this already been mentioned in this thread? =)