Looking for help for a strange, weird dialect (twitter talk)

True, but to capture the slang for a moment, well that would be groovy man, just way far out.

And if it dates the story, then it fixes it in a place in time. Can you dig that?

Goodgulf

Does anybody really know what time it is?

(oops - wrong thread)

Going by the quotes you posted, you're overdoing it. Not every word has to be preceded by "OMG," unless that's a quirk of this specific character. Avoid inserting cliched bits of l33tsp33k just for the sake of having them (unless, again, that's part of a specific character).

For the most part, l33tsp33k, or "twitter talk" as you call it, is based on convenience. Which finger motions are fastest and require the least effort to get the desired phonemes across. For instance:


k = "okay," or "alright"

wtv = "whatever," "I don't care," "irrelevant"

bbiab = "be back in a bit"

noob = "someone who is new at this, or incompetent"


Its more extreme in text messages, or tweets made from mobile phones, when the post has to be made in a hurry.

Fragmented and abrupt phrases are also part of the language, for much the same reason. Some examples:


its a thing = This is something that's been going on for some time.

and then, ___ = Making a prediction that event ____ will soon occur.

butthurt = stressed out over something that shouldn't be bugging you this much. Originally came from a spanking reference, amusingly.


Remember not to overdo it. The most corrupted posts are generally those written in a hurry, or those made by people who are slow at typing. Never plan the post specifically for the case of showing off a l33t peculiarity; use them naturally, as a lazy-fingered teenager would to minimize the number of buttons pressed.

An interesting bit of trivia is that the standard ASDF keyboard is a legacy of the typewriter era. It was designed to be slow and inefficient at typing most English words, to encourage the user to type more slowly and carefully and thus avoid errors (there was no backspace back then). I suspect that l33t evolved at least partly to get around that slowness.

The problem with text speak comes when sentences venture beyond the very short and simple (as in the real world they often need to do, to convey shades of meaning). For short, simple, unsubtle communications it's fine. Text speak is like English with the spellings changed to fit the pronunciation, only more so. You can lose a sense of what the words are doing in the sentence and where their meaning came from, especially as the punctuation is extra-basic. For that reason I very much doubt if legal documents will ever be written that way! Njrick's point is also relevant: text speak, like fashionable slang, changes very fast, whereas in many contexts people do need to understand what was written some time ago.

Actually I quite like abbreviating words, but in my own ways and for my own use (such as a shopping list).

This worries me too. I retired from teaching some years ago now, but did see, in formal essays, things like: 'Hamlet's 2B or not 2B' speech is v/famous.'

I understand and accept that language is a living, changing thing and I should expect it to develop. However, I want changes to add to and enrich the language, not diminish it. I am reminded of Newspeak, which has no nuances or connotations.

Like Goodgulf, I really, really don't think 1337 is going to become accepted formal language. At most, it will become a mainstream dialect for casual conversation and minor business transactions. Slang dialects come and go, and some dumb kid will always get an F for trying to use one in an essay.

I also wouldn't compare it to Newspeak. 1337 actually has some nuance to it, with words having non-literal meanings and connotations. It also doesn't shrink the language like Newspeak did; if anything, it expands it.