Yo wassup bru, hws d thngs goin? I ws nt hm d othr dy whn u cld... ws away wit ma frns. Had maxa fun n party n stuf n missd u bru... nyway wot ws it abt? u k ryt? nythin srys? ill cl u 2nite ok... or txt me lyk nw if u want... laterz maan!
You earned my utmost respect if you read that in one go. Usually it takes me two or three attempts and few minutes to decode such messages and fully comprehend. And all that time I'm usually pissed off at this stupidity, to the point of running up the wall couple of times. Not that I can, but you get the drift. That previous para was taken from one of my friends FB wall, and I was like what the hell for a minute, well longer than that actually and finally managed to decode the message. I think it says something like this:
Yo, what's up bro? How're the things going? I was not at home the other day when you had called... was away with my friends. Had a max fun party and stuff like that and missed you bro. Anyway what's it about? You OK right? Anything serious? I'll call you tonight OK? Or text me like now if you want. Laterz maan!
See, it was only a little longer than the previous, and why can't people really type like that? I can understand if it is a text message, that you have only a limited number of characters. But on FB? On Internet forums? In goddamn emails? Hell you have several GBs of inboxes these days, for god's sake! But still these people have something against vowels they prefer not to write them at all. To the point of what they write are totally unintelligible. These guys should have lived in WW2 days. All those hours wasted on creating new codes to send secret messages would have been saved.
Also, though I'm not sure about it, I think it may take longer to type like this than to type the normal way. At least it does for me - call me old fashioned if you will, but I like to type or write proper English. Even when I chat. How the hell am I supposed to understand when someone type just "f"? Is it if, of or just the f-word shortened? And it gets ridiculous when people write cum instead of come. Once I saw some girl written on one of her guy friends' wall "hi ABC, cn u cum wit me tonite?". I was trying my best not to laugh out loud at work reading that.
Standard prototype is, throw in a Yo and a Sup here and there, take away as many vowels as you can, not type capitals and intentional bad grammar. Maybe it's this new generation's way of being either cool or gangstas!
Duh!
Posts
LOL I agree with you 200%!
ReplyDeleteWell ages ago.. (ok maybe 3+ years back) I used to type the same *so ya, I read that para in one go!* =D Well.. I only used them mostly in chat and SMS and a few words here and there on mails. But in one of the Anime forums, someone did just what you did, you know knock some sense to all those people who were violating the rules and making posts on forums using text and worst the l33t (leet) language. Leet is something I can never decode easily. So.. after reading that small yet effective post that day, I completely stopped using text language. Now the worst case scenario is I'm typing complete words and grammatically correct sentences in SMS! lol
But ya, it's very important to convey your message clearly and directly.. without any ambiguity. Great Post Sach!
well, this mostly developed with SMS since it's pretty hard to type long words on a mobile keypad, but as to why it's used by people who use computers is totally beyond me... :S
ReplyDeleteFinally! I'm so glad you guys feel that way... even sms can be written in a coherent manner! I truly believe it takes longer to type vowel -less messages.
ReplyDeleteIt's also annoying to have the school one taught English at, described as "th grtst skul" on facebook!
Harumi, you sure don't seem to be using any less vowels!
ReplyDelete:P
Chavie, yeah, people are incomprehensible at times, just like what they write!
Angel, ahaha yeah that IS funny!
"th grtst skul"
Hahahahaha!
Srsly dude, I can't STAND n00b sp33k, takes me forever to decipher!
ReplyDeleteIt hurts my eyes and I just tell whoever who's using it to get a dictionary ffs.
I actually just gave up reading that paragraph after the fourth word. :D
Maks, tell me about it!
ReplyDeleteActually, when I was still in SL, I had this young cousin, who was in the O/L class I think who used to send me text messages like that all the time. Usually I had to reply the bugger and ask him what the hell are you saying, many a time. So finally one day I said if you want me to reply, type proper English for fuck's sake and stopped replying him.
Finally he converted to proper English when texting me!
LOL