Language and Humor Blog

You probably know about English speakers’ netspeak/IM speak/textspeak, such as LOL for laughing out loud (and for Australians, m8 for mate). If you’ve read my post Spanish texting / IM abbreviations, you know about Spanish speakers’ usage, such as l100to [l ciento to] for lo siento (“I’m sorry,” “im sry”).

Now it’s time for Chinese Internet slang, also known as “Martian language” (火星文 Huo3xing1wen2).

• They use text as pictures, such as the orz of 3Q得orz.
  • The orz is from Japanese Internet usage. The form orz represents a person in profile who is so disappointed over failure (or now in Taiwan and Mainland China: so awed by admiration) as to fall on his or her hands and knees. The “o” is the head; “r” is the the shoulders, back and arm; and “z” is the curves of the butt and bent legs (illustrations).
  • 3Q means “thank you.” San1 (三 “three”) + Q approximates the sound of “thank you.”
  • The 得 (de5) is a grammar particle that links the verb thank to its adverb manner phrase (“prostrate before someone,” “with great admiration”).
  • Thus, 3Q得orz represents 感谢得五体投地 (gan3xie4 de5 wu3ti3tou2di4, “thank you with great admiration”).
• They use homophones and near homophones, such as the Arabic numeral 4 (四 si4, “four”) for 死 (si3, “to die”) or for 是 (shi4, “yes”).
• They use characters that contain the intended character, such as 饿 (e4, “hungry”) for 我 (wo3, “I”/”me”) because the former contains the latter as a phonetic element (in Ancient Chinese pronunciation), plus a meaning element of “food.”
• They break up Chinese characters into separate pieces. Instead of the character 强 (qiang2, “strong”), they type the two characters 弓 and 虽 (gong1, “archery bow” + sui1, “although”). Another example: instead of the character 顶 (ding3, “summit”), they write the separate characters 丁 and 页 (ding1, “fourth in a series” + ye4, “page of a book”).

American parents mostly try to figure out their kids’ abbreviations and some numbers or combinations of characters substituting for letters (leetspeak such as 3 for E or “/\/\” for M). Chinese and Japanese parents must be really lost. Perhaps they’re falling prostrate in despair.

If you’ve ever wondered what b/c (because) type of typing would be in other languages, Oxford University Press has provided some Spanish ones for free in this 165 KB PDF (plus how to write an old-fashioned letter in Spanish).

Here are some of them:

• atamñn: hasta mañana (["until tomorrow"] talk to you tomorrow, ttyt)
• d+sia2 [de mas sia dos]: demasiados (too many, 2 many)
• eia: ella (she/her)
• gf [ge ("hay") efe]: jefe (boss)
• j+ [j mas]: jamás (never)
• kf [ka efe]: café (coffee/cafe)
• l100to [l ciento to]: lo siento (I’m sorry, im sry)
• mdr: muerto de risa (dying of laughter, rofl [rolling on the floor laughing])
• msj: mensaje (message, msg)
• na- [na menos]: nada menos (nothing much)
• npn: no pasa nada (nothing’s going on)
• q&d [cu and d]: cuando (when)
• qay d nvo?: ¿qué hay de nuevo? (what’s new?)
• s3ad [es tres ad]: estresado (stressed)
• stas bn? [es tas be ene]: ¿estás bien? (you O.K.?, u ok?)
• t&q: te quiero (I love you, i luv u)
• taptec1kf? [te a pe te ce uno ka efe]: ¿te apetece un café? (do you want coffee?)
• x: por (for, 4)
• xfa: por favor (please, pls)
• xq: porque (because, b/c [or bc])

See also (English-language texting abbreviations):

Techdictionary.com
Macmillan English Dictionary

Do recent Internet terms bother you? They seem to bother some. The British polling organization Yougov (site) reportedly found that the most annoying Internet-related term is folksonomy.

Yougov poll

Other irritating terms from the Yougov poll were blogosphere, blog, netiquette, blook (book from a blog, such as Language Log‘s), webinar, vlog (video blog), social networking, cookie, wiki, podcast, avatar, and user-generated content. Yougov polled 2091 adults in June 2007 on behalf of the Lulu Blooker Prize, an award for blooks.

A folksonomy is a “folk taxonomy,” or a classification system done by anyone and without any agreed-upon hierarchy or definitions. Description tags on Flickr photos or Youtube videos are examples. I think it’s an inelegant word and of little use. Even if you’re a huge fan of the collaborative Wikipedia, imagine it with no editorial oversight at all. That’s a folksonomy.

On Youtube some people write sentences that get broken up into single-word tags including the words is or that. I just did a search for “is” on Youtube and got the word is in the titles and descriptions (but seemingly not tags) of 6,110,000 videos. Interestingly, the first video (embedded below) was on Web 2.0, another annoying word for some.

Link to video

Switched.com poll

Switched is running its own poll of annoying words with Web 2.0, the verb to Google, podcast, internets, as well as the pronunciations “dubdubdub” for www and “earl” for URL (thanks to Jake the outreach person for Switched).

Some of these words just take getting used to, such as wiki, cookie, or even blog. However, I don’t like vlog because “vl-” just isn’t part of English phonology (the system of sounds and sound combinations). I wish it were V-blog. But then again, I can say the Russian name “Vladimir” and “Vlad the Impaler” (the human Dracula), so I guess I’ll get used to that, too.

I don’t like podcast because it makes no sense. Nobody broadcasts to iPods or to any other mp3 player. After the recording is over, the file goes up on a Web site with a syndication feed. Then if you are a subscriber to the feed, the file downloads to your computer. You can then listen to it on your computer. You can also move the file to your player, but you don’t have to.

“Earl” for “U-R-L” doesn’t bother me. I can see it catching on. Actual (approximate) conversation from 1997 or 1998 between a coworker (no, Brits, that’s not “cow-orker”) and me:

Coworker: What’s an earl?

Me: (surprised) It’s like a duke or a count.

Coworker: (laughs) No, U-R-L.

Me: Oh, that’s U-R-L. I think it’s “universal resource locator” [it's actually "uniform"]. It’s an Internet address.

Coworker: The computer has some message in Japanese with “URL” in it.

The message was “URL cannot be displayed” or some such.

I can’t say I’m a fan of “dubdubdub” for “double-u double-u double-u.” I can see that it’s easier to say. The Tonight Show‘s Jay Leno was telling people to send in funny headlines to “ww.nbc.com/tonightshow.” Now he just says “nbc.com/tonightshow” (which for some reason goes to the trouble of redirecting to the longer http://www.nbc.com/The_Tonight_Show_with_Jay_Leno/). However, why are we even bothering putting “www” in URL addresses? It isn’t necessary. Even if we do use “www” in URLs, it will usually get filled in without typing anyway.

On a side note and back to Japan, in Japanese they use the letter W to represent the borrowed word daburu (“double”), such as W chiizubaagaa (“double cheeseburger”).

What Internet words are bothersome to you?