The Roving Reporter

Reading between the texts

Posted by: Amy Reiter

Friday, February 1, 2008 4:51 PM

Maybe right now, there is someone right next to you speaking another language, one without vowels, without punctuation and, essentially, without meaning to anyone who doesn't remember firsthand when New Kids on the Block were big.

I'm talking about the language of texting, of chat rooms, the ttyls and lols and myriad other shorthand sayings that mostly teens and tweens use to get their points across without pressing lots of keys.

I must say, not understanding a growing communication method of English-speaking people only a generation younger than me makes me more than a bit worried. (I won't get into how I'm also worried about not speaking more languages in general - though, yes, that's a problem too.)

If adults want to understand children and teenagers, how can they even start if they can't share a language?

If a parent wants to monitor his or her child's text messages or Facebook entries, is that parent going to know what "mtUl8r" means? What about "A/S/L"? The first one meant "meet you later," the second, "age, sex, location."

To be honest, I hadn't thought much about these approximations of phrases until recently, when I logged in to Scrabulous - an online version of Scrabble where you can play with strangers or friends anywhere, anytime. In the "rooms" inviting people to play a match with them or exchanges of "good game" or other nicety, I found myself pretty much left out of conversations - why waste time typing "Good game. Thank you." when you can type "gg ty"?

So, as an infrequent texter and nonmember of MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, etc., I'm thinking I still have a responsibility, as an adult who wants to understand the written language of people younger than me - and be able to reciprocate the thanks in my next game of Scrabulous - to learn some of these shorthands. I'll try to think of it like my Spanish homework in college.

Here are some sites I found: http://www.lingo2word.com
Like a bilingual dictionary for acronyms
http://www.missingkids.com/adcouncil/pdf/lingo/onlinelingo.pdf
and http://www.kdcop.com/pdf/internetchatdictionary.pdf
Comprehensive lists for adults to understand the lingo, made for child-safety purposes

http://transl8it.com/
See the "top msg list" for whole sentences of textspeak and feel completely confused.

Here are some common terms from these sites:
ttyl=talk to you later
ayt=are you there?
lol=laughing out loud
ruf2t= are you free to talk?
bf, gf= boyfriend, girlfriend
taw=teachers are watching

What do you think? What are the texting terms every adult should know?

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