Whats an oldster to do?

[shearbf]

Having never "text" anybody & probably never will, how could I ever figure out what all the 3&4 letter abbreviations used in the forum mean? I'm at a pitiful loss with ALL of these damned things. Maybe I'm the only one out here, but I am sorry to not understand whats being said here so often.
I guess I'll try to find a neighbor kid to translate and maybe make up a dictionary?
I did get one though,only after being tipped off.
Hope we all get to LOL often! It's way good for us.

"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

 

[BarelyAWake]

ZOMG 1337 pwns alla n00bs FTW!!!

jkjk

It takes some gettin' used too but it can help provide a clue to the writer's mood/tone, which normally can be so hard to determine with text. I used to dislike it, but as time passed I not only got used to it, I prefer it in some instances (like real-time chats).

Here, this may be of some help for ya: Internet Slang Dictionary & Translator

..and before ya start feelin' old, check out the average age here: http://motorbicycling.com/f28/age-poll-how-old-we-15847.html

 

[deacon]

I dont even have a cell phone talk bout livin in the dark ages...

 

[Venice Motor Bikes]

Hey Barley... what do you think FTW means?? Because to bikers, it means F**k the world!

 

[weekend-fun]

Omg Venice u naughty boy

I'm a kid here's hat I know:
ZOMG!
OmG
WTF
lol wut

f2f
omfg
idk
nub noon
pwns
<3

 

[weekend-fun]

1337

lol I hadda look that one up
http://www.urbandictionary.com/iphone/#search/define_json?term=1337

 

[BarelyAWake]

Hey Barley... what do you think FTW means??

heh "For The Win" ofc

 

[silverbear]

heh "For The Win" ofc

Yeah, but what does for the win mean? I still don't get it. SLRW (still like real words).
SB

 

[BarelyAWake]

Ahh, the complexities and variations of slang lol

Depends on context ofc, but it's often interchangeable with "Whoohoo!!!" as in "I finished the project FTW/w00t/yeehaw/whoohoo/etc" - and/or striving to excel, towards a "win" as in "I'm workin on the project FTW" etc.

Naturally meanings will vary depending on environment as well, I frequent a Culture & Debate forum (disgusting habit I know lol) and there "WOT" means "Wall Of Text" and not the "Wide Open Throttle" that it does here or even the slang variation of "what" that's common in chats... causing me a moment of confusion every time I see it... on both forums now - thx guys

Full-fledged 1337 was deliberately obscure originally to facilitate discussion of forbidden topics (like hacking ofc) while excluding those unfamiliar with it on public bulletin boards, thus 1337 = (e)leet = elite speak... ofc now it's in common usage, many modern variations aren't truly "1337" and stem from common typos - like "pwn" for "own", the p and the o keys right next to each other ya tend to hit the wrong one if yer in a hurry... then it became fashionable and humorous, like the common substitution of "teh" for "the" etc.

 

[silverbear]

I was just remembering how as kids we liked to speak in pig Latin. Ityay uzway funyay. Or it was something like that to befuddle our parents and other a dolts (not hard to do). There was also "optalk" but I never much cared since I was already fluent in pig Latin. Sometimes twins will create their own secret language as children. I guess maybe it has the same appeal as secret societies, secret handshakes, knowing from a gang banger's colors or other signs what secret society they belong to. I suppose there is a need to know where you belong. Interesting. But I still feel like the anthropologist among tribal members in the Amazon with text talk, on the outside looking in.
Tawkatchalater,
SB

 

[BarelyAWake]

To make matters even more... "interesting" heh, 1337 isn't even in common usage anymore amongst the "elite" outdated and confusing due to variations resulting from it's popularity, it's frowned on and considered "n00bish" to use it except to facilitate the easy understanding of "tone" in a humorous/sarcastic comment.

It's "old school" now... all in the "blink of an eye" to those of us that mighta been around a while

 

[deacon]

too complicated I'm still working on english as a first language and it is.

 

[mdlee1958]

I know what you are talking about Sherbf. Last christmas my 2 oldest "forced" a cell phone on me as "we are getting a little concerned about you dad now that you've been hit by a car for the 4th time". I have never felt that my "lifestyle/schedule" warranted owning a cell phone and now that I have own I feel that they have hung a dog collar around my neck. S*** half the time I forget that I own one and leave the thing on my kitchen counter when I head out the door. I would have an "accident of circumstance" if they hadn't already paid for a full year of service on the stupid thing.

 

[silverbear]

I know what you are talking about Sherbf. Last christmas my 2 oldest "forced" a cell phone on me as "we are getting a little concerned about you dad now that you've been hit by a car for the 4th time". I have never felt that my "lifestyle/schedule" warranted owning a cell phone and now that I have own I feel that they have hung a dog collar around my neck. S*** half the time I forget that I own one and leave the thing on my kitchen counter when I head out the door. I would have an "accident of circumstance" if they hadn't already paid for a full year of service on the stupid thing.

What finally convinced me to get a cell phone was when I went to make a phone call while out on the road and drove many miles before finding a pay phone anywhere. They are becoming as rare as proverbial hen's teeth. What kills me is I'm all the time hitting a wrong key and something comes up I hadn't figured on like 'locked' so I can't use my own phone without guessing at a password. If you don't carry the thousand page manual around with you or have a memory lots better than mine, be careful what key you hit. The one I have does all kinds of things I have no idea or interest in doing. I can't even take a picture with it and if I did I wouldn't know what to do with the picture. It's handy when I want to call, but I still like rotary phones. Young people don't even know what that is. Some day 'phone booth' will mean nothing. Imageezer.& prowdovit2.
SB

 

[deacon]

when my daughter was in high school she played on the softball team, I went to all her games and was still running the studio so I bought one of those clunky old style flip phones. The ones that looked like a brick. I left it in two dozen restaurants before I finally just canceled it and tossed in the trash,.

 

[2door]

Huh? What's wrong with plain old written (typed) English? As the original poster was told, the majority of us were raised in a culture of writing and typing in a legible way. The text message, Internet methods employed all too often today are another sign of plain old LAZY, that has effected this society. Why do it right when you can get away with doing it bad? It goes hand in hand with the work ethics I see from people today. Call it slang if you want; I call it indolent. Sorry, that's just me.
Tom

 

[deacon]

frankly being a bit of a hobby writer I try to write like people talk so that they can hear the voices in their mind. I just cant hear a txt message no matter how hard I try

 

[ThatPerson]

FTW for most people means "for the win", that saying came from the old TV game show called Hollywood Squares. It was basically tic tac toe and when the person was going to make the winning move they would say, "for the win".

 

[BarelyAWake]

Tom, deacon - to a very large extent I agree, yet I view it as adding to my vocabulary and not a reduction... although I will admit this is not always the case with everyone. While I can and do write formally, I'll "spice" writing with these abbreviations to assist with providing a humorous tone in an informal communication.

With extensive exposure, such acronyms cease being mere initials and become words all their own, their literal definition fading - the intent becomes the meaning. The "laughter" variants being a prominent example;

lol: (laugh out loud) chuckle
rofl: (rolling on floor laughing) laugh
roflmao: (rolling on floor laughing my ass off) guffaw

Now while the literal meaning is somewhat odd and disproportionate (when was the last time something made you fall to the floor laughing?) it's functional usage helps provide a "feel" for the contextual humor, such reactions hard to convey in a "normal" writing style - "hehehe" and "hahaha" just not extensive enough to translate into even the three levels of joviality described above. As such they've become new words, adding to one's functional vocabulary and not the reduction it appears.

Where I suspect the difficulties arise are when one unfamiliar with this "language" needs to stop to attempt to decipher, but that's no different than when encountering any unknown word. What I think the real problem stems from is when such usage is at the exclusion of any other content, when the author's vocabulary is so limited that it lacks any other meaning and imagery other than such abbreviations.

... general literacy (or the lack thereof) is an entirely different problem lol

 

[leftywoody]

Have you noticed lately that a call on a cell phone , trumps a face to face conversation all the time . I can be having a decent gab session with some person , then their cell rings and "Your Terminated" . They are the most annoying device of this century . Wasn't Samual Morse the inventor of texting ?